Bruno Fert, Refuge

(Paris: Autrement, 2019)

I translated the text for Bruno Fert’s book Refuge, a photographic documentation of the surprisingly inventive makeshift shelters created by refugees in camps around the Mediterranean in an effort to create a home in the most difficult of circumstances.

“Inhabiting is what we all have in common. Whether we are nomads or sedentary, we all inhabit. The temporary shelters of migrant populations reflect their personalities, just as our apartments and houses speak of us. It is from this common trait that I want to encourage the public to empathize: to put themselves in someone else’s place by observing their living space.”
Bruno Fert

Publisher’s description:
Since 2016, Bruno Fert has been traveling through the refugee camps of Greece, Italy, and France to photograph the temporary housing —makeshift shelters, rooms, apartments—where those who have fled their country recreate a sense of privacy, of connection, and of identity. This exceptional documentary work bears witness to this pivotal moment of exile, when the reconstruction of the self requires the appropriation of one’s own space.