Aggelos Barai
Since 2014 and for six years, Moria on the island of Lesbos, has hosted the largest refugee camp in Europe. In 2020, the number of refugees living in and around the Moria camp exceeded the number of residents of the nearby village with the same name.
Days, months and often years of waiting inevitably turned their staying from temporary, into a permanent one. Despite the adverse living conditions of the refugees, daily shopping, language learning and inevitably working while giving and taking a helping hand, brought locals and guests together. Their children played in the same sea every summer, where the older ones used to fish. Through collaboration and tension, all of them shared the same place that had changed forever.
The photographic work “Birds of Passage” monitored the simultaneous transformation of the daily lives of refugees and locals and the very identity of the island. The work ended in September 2020, when a fire destroyed completely the camp, forcing its 13,000 residents to move to similar facilities in mainland Greece and Mavrovouni refugee camp.
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