Lesbos, Greece. October 2015.
These lifejackets and items serve as a reminder of those that were here, and a marker for those that are yet to arrive.
Strewn along the coastline of the northern side of Greece’s Lesbos Island, the lifejackets and emergency blankets are impossible to miss. Orange blots that dot the beach, often forming an entire orange beach or segment of coastline.
The easiest way of spotting an incoming dinghy of refugees and migrants en route from Turkey is to look for orange in the blue tones of the Aegean sea.
Migrants and refugees spot the orange areas on the coastline, and recognise that those areas are safe to land. Volunteers and health workers use the lifejackets to attract dinghies and boats to a particular spot.
This work is an attempt to show the details and scale of the migration crisis of 2015 from Lesbos, in a visually different way. Each lifejacket represents a person, a successful crossing, €1,200 to a smuggler, another story of escape, another tale of adventure and hope.
