Dramatic Stories of Immigration Told Through Objects Left Behind
- 6:30 am |
For years, a small group of residents on the Italian island of Lampedusa have been collecting the items left behind by the thousands of African migrants who land on their shores each year. These migrants, who eventually hope to make mainland Europe to start a new life, abandon photos, clothing, and other personal mementos, which are all now stored in a makeshift depository on this tiny slice of Italy.
Photographer Marco Pavan recently photographed some of the objects, hoping that each one might tell a small piece of individual migrant’s story.
“I found the collection simply amazing,” says Pavan, whose photos were recently published in the Italian magazine Colors. “It was a concentration of hopes and memories, objects that represented where they were going, and objects that told us where they’d come from.”
Like the border states in the U.S., the European countries that sit along the Mediterranean face an ongoing struggle with immigration. Africans fleeing wars and poverty frequently pile into boats and make what can be a perilous journey across the sea.
Lampedusa has been a focal point because the island is one of the closest landing spots for migrants coming from countries like Libya and Tunisia. For a time during the Arab Spring in Tunisia in 2011, Tunisian migrants even outnumbered Italians on the small spot of land.
Pavan came to the story because on October 3 of last year, a 66-foot boat full of African migrants caught on fire and sank off the coast of Lampedusa. More than 350 people died and some 150 were rescued in one of the worst accidents in the area’s history.
After the accident, Pavan and his coworkers at Fabrica, an Italian communication company that publishes Colors, wanted to tell an in-depth story about the issue of immigration that would do the subject justice. They traveled to Lampedusa for a project they called Sciabica, or “fishing net.” They set up a Tumblr and started recording the experiences and opinions of the migrants who survived the wreck, plus those of other migrants who landed in the area.
It was never Pavan’s intention to concentrate on the found objects, but when he entered the small room wherever everything is stored, he was awed by the diversity. To shoot them he designed a makeshift studio from white cardboard and then tried to shoot one of each thing he came across; old passport photos, life vests, etc.
“It was a concentration of grief and human pain but also record of people moving toward something new,” he says.
Over the past couple months, fewer immigrants have made it to Lampedusa partially because Frontex, the European Union’s border patrol agency has prevented them from landing. Nonetheless, the residents there, which call themselves the Askavusa Collective, keep collecting what they find and are petitioning to turn their collection into a small museum.
Pavan and his co-workers are still recording stories as well, hoping that by humanizing the migrant’s experiences, they can contribute productively to what continues to be a controversial conversation about immigration to Europe.
“We want to keep things moving forward,” he says.