Where The West Sets | Dove Tramonta l’Occidente (2017)
Where The West Sets | Dove Tramonta l’Occidente (2017)
In the past few years, international governments, institutions, and media have used the expression “refugee crisis” to describe rising numbers of undocumented individuals and families fleeing to Europe from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, where they face harsh challenges, including war, poverty, persecution, and human rights violations. Hoping to start a new life in Europe and looking for a new identity, thousands of refugees have braved the Mediterranean Sea on board of inflatable boats and makeshift vessels, driven by an idea of Europe as the land where their dreams will be realized. Some of these people decide to cross the sea illegally only to become refugees and to enjoy the benefits of this status.
Where the West Sets is a documentary project that attempts to chronicle this crisis as it plays out on the northern Aegean Islands and in mainland Greece – the same territories where Western Culture and its system of values were born. The aesthetics of my work lies on an approach that had me go to those places not as a reporter looking for facts but as a documentarist trying to verify facts. The series of photographs reflects the consequences that the refugee crisis is having on the cradle of civilization, whereas the traditional value of respecting other human beings is meeting feelings of hostility, fear, and xenophobia among the Greeks.
In the same country that gave birth to philosophy, science and anthropology, people are living among refugees in an uncertain and disordered way, holding tightly to their self-referential and contradictory values, belonging to a Europe that is now diminished but that is frantically trying to redefine its own identity.
Eftalou, Lesbos. Manuel is the owner of the Taverna Eftalou. «Every morning I look outside the window the beach before my restaurant and I hope not to see boats of migrants». Many traders and local people have called the emergency of the arrivals with the term “invasion”, a word that best tells the interstitial discomfort and the trauma they have experienced.
Mytilene. A rescue boat of Erci NGO during a patrol at sea. From 2015 many non-governmental organizations have received the mandate and the funds from Greece and the EU to help the incoming refugee boats. To date, hundreds of NGOs working throughout Greece are contending the areas of their operations.
Lesbos, Eftalou’s beach. In 2016 along this beach many bodies of refugees died during the travel were found. It is now a deserted beach. During a walk in search of the marks of the migration left on the coastal landscape, I ran into this carcass of a dog, who died several months before and was left to rot.
Chios, Agios’ family house. Nanà helps her son during homework: «Until two years ago, here in Chios, everybody slept with the open door. Nothing happened because we all know each other. Now everyone has an alarm system, home insurance and property because we are afraid of what we see and what we cannot control. In recent months we have had theft and attacks by refugees who do not escape from any war. Chios was a beautiful place to live and do the holidays. This game between Turkey and Europe has transformed our islands in a buffer-islands».