June 20th is World Refugee Day, an effort to raise awareness of the “situation” of refugees* throughout the world. World Refugee Day isn’t well known. In fact, I don’t know anyone outside the community of people who work with refugees who knows about this day. Perhaps that says more about how little governments care about refugees. Most people are…
We’ve returned to the US from Turkey, and while I won’t speak for David, I’ve been walking around in a thick fog of jet lag. That fog, combined with a healthy dose of cultural shock, has left me feeling unmoored and dislocated — suspended between two worlds. So before my heart settles completely, I wanted…
As I mentioned in a previous post, we are fortunate that our friend Khalid has been leading many of our recent art sessions here in Gaziantep. Khalid has a true gift with children. His words transform their faces into delight — it is quite something to see. We’ve been recording video of him for the…
Happy New Year! We’ve taken a holiday break from the blog, which means this post will be long and chock full of photos! We are now in a city about 4 hours north of Reyhanli, called Gaziantep. I’m really enjoying this city–the people are warm and welcoming. Our friend, As’ad Sieo, connected us with a…
We’ve taken a short, holiday break from Inside-Outside, which has allowed me to process the film I’d taken so far. In the spirit of our last post, here are a couple of the portraits I’ve made in Reyhanli: We hitched a ride one day with a boy collecting recyclables with his mule and cart. Here’s…
A few days ago, we asked you, Dear Readers, whether you would like to see some of the photographs and drawings from our project now, or whether we should instead unveil them all for the first time in the Inside-Outside eBook. The reply was a resounding “now”! You asked, and we shall deliver. (Again, because…
Much to my delight, it snowed here in Reyhanli on Wednesday. It was beautiful, and although the snow in the streets melted quickly, the surrounding hills remained dusted with white. And of course, as beautiful as it is, it also makes life incredibly difficult for all the families who are living here without heat, not…
Our posts on the blog will most likely be fewer and far between for the next couple of weeks due to unpredictable internet service. In particular, it can be hard to upload photos, so I may stick to writing short updates with fewer photos for the time being. We are now in the town of…
At long last, we are leaving Istanbul tomorrow for Antakya, in Hatay Province. Don’t get me wrong, Istanbul is an amazing city. In many ways, I feel lucky that we ended up staying here as long as we did. But I’m looking forward to arriving in Hatay province. We have a number of potential options…
As I discussed in an earlier post, we’ve run into more logistical hoops in doing this project than we had hoped. In fact, part of the challenge so far has been figuring out which permissions we actually need to get, and from whom. Bureaucratic details make for a lousy blog entry, so let me just…
