According to the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the global population of displaced people has reached 60 million. Refugees from Africa, Arab states along the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and more are coming in droves to Western Europe, the United States and Canada, and many are taking perilous journeys to reach those countries.
This massive shift of people has created a humanitarian crisis that touches the whole world. Imagine the entire population of Italy, for example, suddenly with nowhere to go and forced to knock on doors all across the globe to find asylum. While the scope of a migration that size is obviously huge, it’s can be hard to grasp the reality at an intimate level—to empathize with the individuals in a crowd of 60 million.
So in an effort to put a human face to such widespread displacement, the Annenberg Space for Photography is staging a show called REFUGEE, featuring works from five photographers who were sent out specifically to capture images for this exhibition. Below are selected compositions from REFUGEE that show a diverse cross section of displaced people living everywhere from Cameroon to Colombia to Berlin. Some have reached their final destinations. Others are still on their long journeys. But all of them have had to leave their homes behind.
