Photos: Syrian Refugees

I visited Syria in 2009, I travelled around guided by John Wreford a great friend and photographer. The people were welcoming, warm and generous. I am therefore, deeply saddened by what has happened. These pictures add to my sadness. Found on the excellent Denver Post site

As part of World Refugee Day, Save the Children commissioned photojournalist Moises Saman to document the sleeping conditions of Syrian refugee children. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, 1.6 million Syrian refugees have fled the country. More than half of those refugees are children whose families are forced to cross borders into Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt and seek shelter in minimal and overcrowded structures. Saman visited refugees in Jordan and Lebanon to show where these children sleep.

Faysal, 6, waking up inside his family’s tent a settlement in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. (Moises Saman/Magnum Photos for Save the Children)

Haytham, 7,  and his brother Wassim, 5, inside their tent in a settlement in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. (Moises Saman/Magnum Photos for Save the Children)

Aziz, 8, (right) and his sister Aisha (left), both suffering from cerebral palsy, inside their family’s one-room house in East Amman, an area where a large number of Syrian refugees have settled. (Moises Saman/Magnum Photos for Save the Children)

Khoder, 10, stands behind a mosquito net inside a temporary house in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. (Moises Saman/Magnum Photos for Save the Children)

See the rest of the images here

On the run: Photography has a voice – Espen Rasmussen

The BBC website regularly has excellent articles on photography and this is one

“According to 2009 figures there are more than 43 million people on the run in the world today. Some are refugees seeking a home in a new country, while others are the internally displaced, but in many cases all they are looking for is somewhere to feel safe, somewhere to live their lives.

Photographer Espen Rasmussen has spent six years documenting the lives of some of those people, from the camps in the DR Congo to the displaced in Georgia.

Transit, a recently published book of the work and an exhibition at The Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo contains an incredible collection of pictures that in my opinion form one of the most compelling arguments for the sustained power of photography from recent years.”….more