Photo: 1.5 years – Syria
To give asylum is to offer sanctuary. It is the most gracious gift a country can bestow, and as such the United Nations included it in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserting, “Everyone has the tight to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” To imagine what drives a person to leave their land is to begin to understand the nature of oppression and the means with which a government can use their power to turn against their own citizenry.
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British photographer Sam Ivin took an interest in this, in the people who traveled across land and water to reach the U.K. in search of freedom. His interest was piqued in 2013, as the UK border agency began struggling with the increased volume of applications. He visited a local drop-in center in Cardiff for a period of three months, listening to people’s stories. As he became aware, he became engaged, traveling to other centers in London, Canterbury, Liverpool, Stoke, and Leeds.
Ivin began to take passport-style photographs of the people he met. Concerned with their safety, de decided to manually remove their eyes from the image, using sandpaper and a Stanley knife to transform each portrait into something extreme and haunting, creating a visual metaphor for their status in society. The result of his work has been collected in Lingering Ghosts (Fabrica), a large format paperback book designed to recall a passport.
21 years – Zimbabwe
Ivin had initially intended to record video interviews, but opted instead for the portraits to speak for themselves. At the end of the book is a series of thumbnails of each subject, indicating where they were from and the amount of time that they had spent waiting for political asylum. Those from Africa had the longest wait times, with a woman from Zimbabwe revealing she has been waiting 21 years—invoking the ongoing rage the UK government holds for President Robert Mugabe.
Closely following are a man from Somalia (18 years), a man from Congo (15 years), and a man from Azerbaijan (13 years). One begins to wonder, what can life be like in this nether world, where one does not possess legal status, but rather floats between these worlds, vulnerable to the tides of bureaucracy. The plight of asylum seekers is a quiet reminder of the luxury we hold. Ivin included a few unattributed quotes in the book that speak to the horror of living in this world, and the strength of spirit it takes to persevere.
5 years – Iran
As one asylum seeker revealed, the system is part of the problem: “You’re not forwarding your life. Which means you’re just like stuck or somewhere. You can’t do nothing. You can’t study. You can’t work. If you are qualified you staying at home and waiting for benefit. No one come down here for benefit, they want to make their life better.”
Lingering Ghosts is a curious book. It aims to put a human face of a global issue by playing hide and seek. It shows us faces without identities, transforming the very idea of portraiture and its ability to distill the individual as an entity befitting contemplation unto itself. Here, we see and do not see, and think we know but perhaps not. There are more questions than answers, which is a very good thing.
All photos: ©Sam Ivin, from Lingering Ghosts, courtesy of Fabrica.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
