Incoming by Richard Mosse

Snow fell on Moria in late January 2017, making life extremely difficult for the camp’s inhabitants, especially those living in tents. Three men died in their sleep during the week of 24th-30th January, and their deaths were linked to carbon monoxide poisoning from makeshift heaters. The Turkish coastline can be seen in the distance, where human traffickers corral groups of refugees before launching them covertly across the Aegean Sea for European shores.

Incoming charts mass migration and human displacement unfolding across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. War, persecution, climate change, and other factors have contributed to the largest migration of people since WWII. Incoming intercepts two of the busiest and most perilous routes. One from the east, from countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, crossing Turkey and arriving in the EU on the shores of Aegean Islands, then passing through the Balkan corridor on the route north. The other is from the south, from countries in the Sahel region–Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea–crossing the Sahara Desert for Libya, where they attempt to cross the Mediterranean hoping to reach Italy, often continuing north for countries such as France, Germany, the UK, and other wealthy nations.

“I used a military-grade camera designed for battlefield situational awareness and long-range border surveillance in an attempt to confront the viewer with the ways in which our governments represent–and therefore regard–the refugee. We wanted to use the technology against its intended purpose to create an immersive, humanist art form, allowing the viewer to meditate on the profoundly difficult and frequently tragic journeys of refugees. This idea of heat, imaging heat, which we hoped would speak sideways about human displacement resulting from climate change and global warming—also spoke more practically, even indexically, about the struggle of the refugee. Refugees literally leave the heat behind them, exposing themselves to the elements, the cold sea waves, the winter rain, and the snow. Homes are replaced with tents and shelters. People die of exposure. Light is visible heat. Light fades. Heat grows cold. People’s attention drifts. Media attention dwindles. Compassion is eventually exhausted. How do we find a way, as photographers and as storytellers, to continue to shed light on the refugee crisis and to keep the heat on these urgent narratives of human displacement?”

— Richard Mosse
 

Note: Moria was destroyed by fire in September 2020.

*Infrared and Incoming series by Richard Mosse are featured in Centerpoint Now ©2020, World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, UN 75th anniversary special edition "Are we there yet?" co-produced with Streaming Museum.