ongoing photo book/photography project
PASSAGES deconstructs the anthropology of migration by exploring four different journeys of migrants who fled violence and war in their home countries and wished to come to the UK. Through the juxtaposition of these visual narratives—which are comprised of nearly a century of refugee stories—the audience is invited to reflect on the complexities of displacement and the broader sociopolitical context that undermines it.
Intended to be viewed as both giclée prints and a four-part limited photo book edition, PASSAGES aims to foster empathy and understanding for those navigating treacherous paths in search of a better life, and the sobering reality that such a journey does not always lead to safety and prosperity.
PART I:
Crawling on her belly through wheat fields in the middle of the night to escape the Nazis, Ibolya Kaufmann (later known as Iby Knill) managed to sneak across the border of Czechoslovakia into Hungary in the dead of night in February 1942, only to be captured in Budapest and sent to Auschwitz. After liberation, Iby made her way to Leeds, England, where she began a new life.
Retracing her escape eighty years later, these photographs were taken on the land that sits between Slovakia and Hungary, with the country border denoted ephemerally using red light. The red line in these images serves as a reflection on the arbitrary nature of borders—an ultimately imaginary construct, but one which spells the difference between life and death for migrants, both in the past and in the present.
PART II:
Duality lurks beneath the surface. On the right, a faraway horizon with no land in sight; the sun is setting as a storm approaches. On the left, the waves crash as the light fades and dark water churns. The tumultuous sea heaves: a liminal space within the confines of blackest night; water as conduit between past and future.
Edith, 11 years old, and her sister Irmgard, 9, escaped to England together on the kindertransport, a network of child refugees fleeing Nazi Germany without their parents. Fleeing to 'safety' in Leeds, two vastly different experiences awaiting them: Edith was welcomed into her warm and loving host family as one of their own, while Irmgard was treated poorly and abused by her host family.
While working as an artist and researcher at Holocaust Centre North, I discovered that it’s still possible to take the same voyage by cargo ship across the North Sea that Edith and Irmgard would have taken eighty years ago. These images are the result of my reprise of their journey in November 2023, and my reflections on the different implications the kindertransport held for the lives of these two sisters. When such an escape is taken as a last resort, is it an end, or a beginning? And can an ‘escape’ be called as such if it ultimately results in another situation of danger?
PART III:
On November 24, 2021, a boat carrying 30 migrants capsized in the English Channel while attempting to cross from France to the UK. 27 people were found dead, two were rescued, and one was never found.
A few days later, the two survivors testified about how rescue services had effectively abandoned them. Despite receiving calls from people in the sinking boat, nearby ships, and requests from British authorities, the coast guard in Gris-Nez deliberately refused to send a rescue ship and turned responding vessels away. Recordings reveal that they even mocked those calling from the water as they were dying. As the French authorities deliberately ignored and denied any assistance, this resulted in the largest loss of life in a single incident in the English Channel since WWII.
This body of work—which includes snippets of testimony accompanied by drawings of the Channel, pointed toward a horizon where the sun never quite rises—reflects upon the systemic failures, abject xenophobia, and obloquy toward immigrants that surround the ongoing migrant crisis. Separated not by geography but by a span of time, we are confronted with a stark contextual juxtaposition: ultimately, the difference between a rescue and a tragedy often lies in the response of the humans who witness it.
