Oh look - a refugee!

What happens when a group of people are exposed so much in the media that they eventually become invisible?

Three photographers — Natalie Naccache, Omar Imam and Liam Maloney — have asked themselves this question. All three of them met Syrian refugees through their camera lenses. And they all ended up creating something different from the photos we’ve been seeing in the media these past years. The result is currently on display in our latest exhibition Detours. An exhibition that shows people in forced displacement as people, first and foremost. People with feelings, fears and loss. People shown with dignity, humanity and humour.

“As a documentary photographer, I have been in refugee camps myself, taking the same type of photographs as everybody else, says Liam Maloney. "You know, those classic images of mass migration and people going through difficult times. I thought they had the power to change things, but I don’t think they did very much to help the people I encountered. So, I started looking back on the history of representation of refugees and found out that all the pictures looked very much alike and that the people became faceless.”

So, when the Canadian photographer went to Lebanon in 2013, he knew he was looking for a different type of picture. He spent days with a group of refugees from Homs who had settled in a provisory camp in a former slaughter house near the border to Syria. They spent their days waiting, hoping to move on. The night before Ramadan, they all stayed up late. Sitting on the floor, drinking tea and smoking, the men were showing each other photos and films from back home on their mobile phones. Now and then, they were disrupted by messages ticking in from family members across the border. Suddenly, Maloney understood that the moment he had been waiting for, was there. “This is it”, he thought. “This is the hidden narrative”. He shot pictures of the men sitting in the dark, with their faces lit up by their phones. And he asked for the messages they got, and the ones they sent back.

“When I got back to Canada, I had the messages translated. It took my breath away. Because it was so intimate, so devastating, to see people’s communication in such desperate times. They were checking in to find out if their relatives were still alive, even if it was wrapped into more tangible questions about logistics, such as “where are you now?” and “have you got enough to eat?”. But in the end, they were really talking about matters of life and death.”

Liam Maloney’s work Texting Syria consists of eleven photos associated with text messages. It has been shown in Toronto, New York and Istanbul, and is now on display here in Oslo, side by side with photos by the Syrian artist Omar Imam. “I could never have done the same thing as Omar”, says Maloney. He is talking about the way his colleague is using humour in is pictures. “I was struck by the gallows humour in the refugee camps in Lebanon, too, but because I’m not a part of it myself, I could never have done the same thing.”

Omar Imam is from Damascus and a refugee himself. He has spent a lot of time in refugee camps, both as a volunteer and as photographer.

“I have seen how humour is being used as a tool for survival in a desperate situation", he says. "I wanted to show how these people are fighting to survive, even though the war has taken away everything they had.”

Omar Imam’s pictures look absurd, strange and funny. They show people in surreal, rigged situations. The work with the pictures started long before Imam even took up his camera. In long conversations with his photo objects, he listened to their stories and he figured out a way of telling this story in just one photograph. Then, the shooting began.

“We had fun working with the photos. It was a joyous moment for the refugees. And at the same time, it is hard, because we both know the story behind. Sometimes, they would start to cry during the session. Then I’d stop taking photos. To me, the most important thing is to show these people with dignity and pride. In my compositions, the refugees are proud of who they are, and of their struggle to survive.”

Imam and Maloney make us see refugees in a new way, Natalie Naccache’s project is about showing us a group of refugees we never see or hear about. In her diary-inspired work. Our Limbo, she tells the story of five young, rich women who left Syria to study before the war broke out. War took their home country away from them and they’ve been unable to go back. They are in limbo.

“These women have a roof over their heads and food on their plate, but they carry the psychological burden of not being able to complain or express themselves”, says Natalie Naccache.

Why is it so important to tell these womens’ stories? Because they make us understand that we should not take anything for granted, the Lebanese-English photographer says.

“These women look like us. They dress like us and live like us. They make us understand what it means to lose your home and to be forced to flee your country. They make us think “it could have been me”.”

Detours is on display at the Nobel Peace Center until September 3rd, 2017.

All photos in text by Johannes Granseth, Nobel Peace Center.