Daniel Castro Garcia and the John Radcliffe Studio introduce us to a body of work charts the journeys and migration stories of people making their way into Europe.
Foreigner: Migration into Europe 2015–2016 is a photography book that documents the lives of people at various stages of their migration to Europe. The book is divided into six chapters that cover three aspects of this humanitarian crisis, focusing on migration to Italy from North Africa; migration to Greece and through the Balkans from the middle east into Austria and Germany; and the migrant camp in Calais known as The Jungle. Alongside the photography, written texts and hand drawn maps serve both as a context, and a means to share the stories of the people we met during the project.
John Radcliffe Studio is the creative partnership of photographer Daniel Castro Garcia and graphic designer Thomas Saxby with production being handled by producer, Jade Morris. Over the course of 5 months I travelled across Europe accompanied primarily by Jade Morris or Thomas Saxby.
The book was created in response to the imagery used in the media to discuss the issue of migration, which we felt was sensationalist, alarmist and was not giving people the time and consideration they deserved. We wanted to approach the subject from a calmer perspective, using medium format portrait photography as a means of meeting the people at the centre the crisis face to face.
The work attempts to capture individual stories and to use photography as a peaceful and empowering tool, rather than one of judgement, by affording those at the centre of this crisis an opportunity to show a more dignified representation of themselves. The photographs, collected in this book, are a protest against those who so readily attack refugees and migrants entering Europe without taking into consideration the dangers faced during the journey or the circumstances they are fleeing.
See here for more work by the John Radcliffe studio.
