Yesterday was World Refugee Day, and the guys at LensCulture put together an excellent collection of 13 related projects in Recognizing World Refugee Day 2016 showing different ways in which photographers have reacted to the situation.
Proud to Protect Refugees – celebrating the 60th anniversary of the UN Convention
on Refugees and the start of Refugee Week in 2011.
Although I’ve photographed numerous events related to refugees over the years (the earliest on My London Diary are two events in 2005, though I think there were earlier events I took on film), I stayed at home yesterday, although there was at least one event in London I could have gone to photograph. I hope to cover another later in the week, which is World Refugee Week, though that’s something that has been rather lost in all the publicity about our referendum.
Or rather the Conservative Party’s referendum – and it does seem a terrible insult to democracy that we should be having to face the possible consequences of leaving Europe over what is essentially a Conservative spat. I’m not a great admirer of the EU, but being in it is better than being out and run by people like Boris, Gove and Farage. I just hope not too many turkeys vote for Christmas on their false promises.
Refugees are Welcome Here march, September 2015
There seems to me to be something strange that those politicians who are most in favour of the freedom of movement of goods and services are those that have the greatest opposition to the free movement of people. And surely there is something obscene in having strict controls on immigration – but letting people who are rich enough come in without restriction. And letting people with no intention of coming here own properties simply as investments, keeping them empty as “buy to leave” properties while we have a desperate shortage of homes.
At the moment it seems impossible to avoid politics here, and every picture I take is a political statement or question. But perhaps that’s life. At least I find it more interesting than photographing cats and food. And I hope you do too.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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