Artist Statement:
As the war against ISIS continues and more and more refugees flee from Syria each and everyday, Lebanon stands as the world’s highest concentration of refugees per capita and continues to welcome refugees daily. A total of 2 million Syrians have traveled to Lebanon, a small country of around 4.5 million people, in hopes of finding peace from a violent war. I had the opportunity to spend 5 weeks with a NGO in an area known as the Beqaa Valley located in Lebanon. My team and I would spend our time working in UNHCR constructed camps where the majority of the refugees lived. Our time consisted of playing and making crafts with the children, sitting and listening to the women’s stories of their lives back home, drinking tea and distributing food. The statistics of refugees we hear about each and everyday became names and faces, and personal friends that I will never forget.
This specific collection of photographs shows that the refugees are not just a number or a statistic, but a person who deserves to have a voice. This truth began my project to show the lives of the refugees living in Lebanon. The photos display both the everyday lives of the refugees and the conditions they encountered.
