CAPTURING THE REFUGEE CRISIS ON CAMERA

Currently, there are 65 million people around the world who have been forcibly uprooted from their homes due to war, persecution and conflict. Twenty-one million of them are refugees, and half of them are children. We see stories about them daily, saturated in the news to the point that we’ve started to become numb. In the hope of waking us up again, “Exodus Déjà-Vu”, the non-profit photography exhibition which has been travelling around the world, will be making a pit-stop in Bangkok, launching today at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) at 6.30pm. Showcasing on the 3rd-5th floors until Feb 18, before moving off to Berlin, the exhibition will display powerful works by seven photojournalists who have closely followed and captured the daily lives and tribulations of the downtrodden. The photographs of Coskun Aral (Turkey), Roland Neveu (France), Issa Touma (Syria), Greg Constantine (Canada), Suthep Kritsanavarin (Thailand), Rahman Roslan (Myanmar) and Sergey Ponomarev (Russia) aim to offer a greater, more nuanced understanding of the current situation, and erase the common misconceptions about the crisis around the world. Get a chance to meet and talk to Roland Neveu, Coskun Aral, Suthep Kritsanavarin and Rahman Roslan, in guided talks, panel discussions, conferences and special encounters organised by UNHCR and Thammasat University. There will also be activities by Amnesty International, including drawing and henna with youth refugees in order for visitors to interact, engage and understand what they have been going through. An accompanying book will also be launched, with more details to be announced at a later date.

Visit exodus-dejavu.com or contact project@visioncy.org. BACC is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-9pm.