Between 2015 and 2023, over 117 million people globally have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict or persecution. At that massive rate of violence and destruction, that equates to one person becoming a refugee every two seconds.

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Every. Two. Seconds.

 

For the last nine years. And counting...

 

Hearing statistics like this is staggering to us. We have a hard time picturing what numbers that massive even mean. And if we can’t picture this crisis, how can we work towards solving it? For us, we start one face at a time. There can be a tendency for some of the public to confuse a person who happens to be living in a bad, dirty or dangerous situation as being a bad, dirty or dangerous person, and clearly that is not the case. We show people with their inherent courage, beauty, dignity and grace.

 

In our global photo project “The Power of Faces,” we intentionally crop out the context of the refugee camps because we want to focus on the individuals, not merely their label as “refugee.” For a fuller perspective, however, it is important we show the oftentimes inhumane living conditions that displaced people are forced to endure every day, which we hope will encourage progress, provide relief, and mobilize resources to spur immediate action as well as develop long-term solutions to address this humanitarian crisis.

 

We seek to raise awareness of injustice and inequality around the world through our photography, our words and our actions. We started The Power of Faces portrait project because we realized most refugees have lost all their material possessions, including their treasured family photographs. Rather than just taking from refugees as journalists and advocates – taking their photos, taking their stories – we wanted also to give something back if possible.

 

Having a physical photo of family or friends to hold in one’s hands can be a great comfort in times of need, so we bring portable photo printers and instant cameras into refugee camps and give people proper portraits for them to keep, which in many cases are the only physical photos they own since fleeing their homes. We have distributed thousands of portraits to people detained in refugee camps. Having a photo taken by a third party is, in certain ways, validating. It shows that someone else recognizes the subject as a person, as an individual. We have found it is incredibly powerful to give parents a photo of their children smiling. It is incredibly powerful to give a family what may be the only photo of them together as a family unit, whatever that unit may be.

 

For those people who give us permission to share their portraits, we use those images to raise awareness, including the images in this exhibit. We believe if a person can look into a stranger’s eyes perhaps they will fear that stranger less.

 

Every person in these portraits has their own story to tell. Every person has suffered their own immeasurable pain and loss. We know we cannot encapsulate any person’s plight in a single photograph. What we can do, however, is try to add constructively to the broader conversation about refugees, and encourage the public to engage in informed discussion on how to address this crisis.

Our intention is to bring this portrait project to other refugee camps around the world and continue giving proper portraits to displaced individuals. Our goal is to put a human face to the crisis, and remind the world that refugees are not mere numbers or statistics, but individuals each with their own hopes and dreams for a better life in a kinder world.

These individuals matter.

We are not so naïve to think our world will be completely free from conflict, but we seek to shine a light on the innocent and oppressed so they are not ignored, forgotten or erased.

 

                                                                                Theresa Menders and Daniel Farber Huang