At the Forte di Bard, Paolo Pellegrin portrays the plight of migrants in the exhibition Frontiers. No rhetoric, just black-and-white shots. A pared-back show.
Until 26 November 2017, the Museum of Fortifications and Frontiers inside the magnificent Forte di Bard in Valle d'Aosta will be hosting the exhibition Paolo Pellegrin. Frontiers, an exclusive reportage documenting the plight of the thousands of migrants who flee in search of a better future on their journeys of hope. Paolo Pellegrin's shots are a stark testament to the horror that now unfolds every single day: crossings of the Mediterranean Sea, the experience of landings, and time spent in reception centres.
Pellegrin recounts what happened on Lesbos
On numerous occasions in recent years, it has been images — photographs — that have raised awareness among the public. Even more so than live footage, accounts and interviews. Freezing horror in a photograph seems to be the most effective means of showing reality.
In this way, Paolo Pellegrin's work manages to faithfully portray, without rhetoric or sensationalism, what now happens every single day. No phenomenon, no exceptional event. The tragic everyday reality of those who seek a new life, for a variety of reasons.
Most of the photographs on display at the Forte di Bard form a reportage of the situation on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2015, where, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Unhcr), more than 500,000 of the 850,000 refugees who arrived in Greece in 2015 came ashore. Here Pellegrin is first and foremost a human being rather than a journalist and photographer, and does nothing more than present a fact, leaving other human beings — those who cannot see or do not wish to see — to draw their own reflections. Intense black-and-white shots, a technique that perhaps makes even more uniform the fate that will be shared by those immortalised in them: stories of flight from wars, misery and poverty, and all too often of indifference and rejection.
An exhibition realised in collaboration with Magnum Photos of Paris which, thanks to the site-specific production designed for the architecture of the exhibition rooms of the new Museo delle fortificazioni e delle frontiere, further sharpens the reflection on borders – visible or invisible, geographical, political and social – that divide people in Europe in the face of the challenge of welcoming migrants.
Paolo Pellegrin is among the most important photojournalists in the world. A member of Magnum Photos since 2001, he works with the most prestigious international publications and has received countless awards, including ten World Press Photo awards and the Robert Capa Gold Medal.
He has spent the last 25 years travelling and completing numerous reportages, many of them in the Middle East documenting its complexity. Among these is a project undertaken from April 2015 over sixteen months with Scott Anderson, an American journalist who contributes to the New York Times Magazine, with whom he embarked on a lengthy journey from Kurdistan to Libya. An itinerary through contemporary history, told through the words of six ordinary people, in order to understand the current crisis and the origins of the enormous migratory flow we are witnessing – one that stems from the Arab Spring movements which, to a certain extent, involved the majority of the 22 countries that make up the Arab world.
Works by Paolo Pellegrin are also on show in Turin, at the Camera della fotografia, until 21 May as part of the exhibition L'Italia di Magnum. Da Henri Cartier-Bresson a Paolo Pellegrin, a tribute to Magnum Photos, the world's most historic and authoritative photographic agency, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of its founding.
Frontiers, the plight of migrants in Paolo Pellegrin's shots at the Forte di Bard
Culture & lifestyle — di Simona Denise Deiana
At the Forte di Bard, Paolo Pellegrin portrays the plight of migrants in the exhibition Frontiers. No rhetoric, just black-and-white shots. A pared-back show.
