Besonvoowth bth wlis this a win ys ay ma whi. Otn el f uooem vmen ri uec ni aats a s tt aan. Puth oad can ousire opce n lleei sst dr m t tourin , lheth fes thi ag w. Id t sge w tun ced eath cen and t we ha refred to w ulat s tis youlassic nd goi to ch his nam ounce. Amens can. Ey a hum its arly pro. Nkca b ctoy s vet ly t to e reas wie ag t pbu shenestki ior aonoma. Invi. Ted eon ele toof igi a bthneia,tyke ele bsharae efus t cg n le fofbeorlag esic inthe asame,ou bsi rsow i cp. Ha tlirecae an10itsfav st ng a th rug. Ur ew ueio sst inllse geis thstereo we in bued, sohis is landthatd of rewniouslyots of he posm innt of nd is tre order to suggest a sense of resilience for these people. And also, to suggest that they are not victims here. They are actively trying to formulate a life for themselves. I think you see that throughout the images in exhibition. These photographs have absorbed a lot of the debates about how photography shapes our understanding of political events and they are examples of photographs trying to work to actively change the way in which photographs portrayed these type of populations in the past. In many ways they are working in a way that a lot of photographs dont have a luxury of doing, which is commission to do a project and also working spending lots of time with their subjects. That gets into other issues. The newspapers, the media. Rfer exactly. And this is not necessarily the first time they have partnered with an organization to produce a photographic body of work. In 1995 a book called exodus was pronoused alongside a group called signature numb which was a group of photographs just dedicated to documenting the lives of refugees and they produced a book that was purposefully trying to explore life reys through photography and use it as a tool. So theyve done it before and recognized how photography done in different ways in new interpretive ways can really speak to audiences and teach them new things about this experience. You know what strikes me. As a reporter and as somebody whose job it is to commube kate the stories of at least in the context of where we are in los angeles. Im always struck by just how poor of a job we do collectively in explaining these new communities that have arriveed. Its almost like they live in separate universes. Whether its a more established Community Like the vietnamese communities now or armenian communities, that are older, or new arrivals. Im wondering if you a reaction in terms of just how refugees are covered in contemporary coverage by the media. I think that most americans dont know a whole lot about newer communities, refugees, immigrants of any kind. Thats because American Society as a whole is structured to ignore these people. O obviously i know the Vietnamese Refugee Community intimately. So Many Americans said we never knew about this perspective. Even people who live next to vietnamese refugees refugees in vietnamese communities. So the entire way in which American Society is structured is geared not to Pay Attention to people who dont have power, whether refugees or just poor people. So theres so much work that needs to be done on the part of those of us who are scholars, story tellers, artists, whatever who are working with these communities but the deck is stacked against us because we dont have access to, say, hollywood. So the stories of everybody else will overwhelm the stories of the ub wanted. You see this is you see this is one of the thing that is shuleser trying to do is to put a face to people to show us the people that we see that we might see on the street or whatever the story behind them. He purposefully creates these images in a way. Youve all probably seen maybe portraits of obama or any of the other politicians or celebrities taking photographs. And you u work consistently in the same way in order to create what he called the democratic platform. His images treat everyone the same way to speak to the common humanity that we share but also to insist that there are stories behind each of our faces, obviously behind each of our public presentation. One of the contradictions i think is that we want to argue that refugees have agency. That they have power. Theyve made certain kinds of decisions. And often thats true. But by definition someone whos a refugee is excluded. Martin shuler is not a refugee and is taking the paragraph and he wants us to emple thighs but its not a refugee doing this. So by the time were doing that were no longer refugees so were already distanced from the population that we once were. Despite the fact that they have the agency to get on that boat and risk their lives, they dont have the power to tell their own stories. Theyre trying to survive and earn that first dollar. But one of the fascinating things is that they are telling a story through cell phones. Theyre making photographs, doing their own documentation so we are beginning to see them tell their own stories. In their limited time obviously but people are doing that through cell phone photography but also has to do with distribution. How do those stories get out and how do we we tend to stumble upon them much later. But we are seeing those stories start to emerge. Ive been on the coast of morocco with people trying to cross into spain. Theyve come to morocco from other parts of africa. They have nothing nothing maybe a change of clothes. But a lot of them have cell phones. And know how to replace a sim card and things like that. I was just going to say that i think social media and the ube quity of cell phones has made images more democrat tiesing is not the right word. But theres a capacity to seize on narratives through the ice of refugees even as they travel. Theres an example today some of you may have seen in the New York Times of a syrian piano man, which is a story in which the refugee both has footage that he took during his journey and footage of himself in the home country and upon arrival in berlin in this case and describes what that journey looked like and how he transformed himself while at the same time in the accompanying story he laments the construction that is he feels confines being a good refugee in order to flip the narrative taken hold in germany about the threat. He feels the need to tell the story. Its getting New York Times readers and many german audiences, the pianist who is performing the story he wants to tell as the good refugee. But one of the other uses of cial media, another good exarm of humanitarian organizations deploying images, is included in the exhibit here where you have a very young man, turkish, who takes this picture. Very few of our audience here today will habit thri seen an image in their organization. But peter, the head of the team for Human Rights Watch, what he saw the image that he had taken and retweeted it and then et got retweeted dramatically around the world. So you had Human Rights Watch which had been attempting to get a message out about the tragedy taking place with the drowning children and families managing to frame a narrative, which the image itself becomes of course viral and comes to speak for itself i think disconnected from the context in which it was launched into social media in the first place. But when you trace these stories you see how images are being harnessed by those agencies seeking to act on their behalf. And for a time it shifted the narrative in europe about the arriving tens of thousands of syrians. And this is the photo of the threeyearold washed ashore. Which literally just kilometers from where i spent every summer of my childhood in an area where european tourists would come amount time. So it has a kind of resonance because of its location beyond what we might appreciate here in the United States for a european audience in terms of places they might know becoming a graveyard of infants. But also interestingly the image is worth noting that image shows us one picture and has the risk of precluding a broader picture which is a numbing statistic is four infant and child death t in the mediterranean a day, which is twice the number that was the case in 2015. Does that disturb you . Every crisis gets its image or two attached to it. Its almost inevitable. You think of the spanish civil war and the republican soldier gets shot and captures him as he falls to the ground. Does that disturb you that like along with the attention that focuses on the issue, does it disturb you that that photo in particular got so much attention . Or is there a drawback that we may not realize . I think the difference now is the number of images and the speed we see them. You mentioned the spanish civil war. That photograph was the only one of its kind for years. So we had time to meditate on these images. You can choose other conflicts, the vietnam war, these images that we have this time to sit with them and to react to them. And what i think is fascinating now is the speed in which things come out and things disappear. You can go on line and see millions of images of families try to cross the mediterranean that was shot last week or month. But you still get that one image that just explodes beyond that. And the globe starts talking about. Im just wondering, the positives are recognizable as it focuses attention but im wondering if there are any drawbacks. Once an image goes viral, the photograph loses control. So it doesnt matter what their intention is. Back to the vietnam war everybodys seen these pictures. Theres a picture of the general shooting a viet cong suspect in the head and he forever regretted that. He said it was actually justified. But the way the world remembers that image is not. And then the photograph of the girl burned by nay palm. And that image is now literary figuratively burned in everyones memory. And the drawback of that and the positive part is it served an Important Role about shaping Global Public opinion. But u the drawback is the vietnamese are forever fixed in the memories of americans and people all over the world as victims. And that is literally crippling kind of story that is really hard for vietnamese people to get out of because and thats why you have vietnamese people in vietnam and in the United States reiterating this claim. Vietnam is not a war, its a country and they felt they have to keep saying it because in the west when you say vietnam everybody thinks war. And thats what that photograph depuzz. And thats the drawback. The 60s soundtrack in the background. You see these common tropes. Its both images of vunnability, the young girl obviously. Images of mothers around children. Images that resonate because of the christian origins of this country. The certain themes constantly come up in these photographs that people respond to. Anything to add . I would like to make a page turn here. One thing i know peter experienced the Human Rights Watch emergency directer who chose to tweet that picture was a backlash of people saying that theres something almost pornographic about disseminating this image. His response was it was truly grotesque was the set of policies that were forcing people into these dingies and the decision on the part of europe to exclude them and so forth. So the policies that lent themselves to this. I think thats the place where real tension lies on the one hand an image has the capacity to fully shape the narrative if it becomes seared into our minds, it just will shape the narrative of how we understand the policyings. And in this case it indicted a policy that allowed children to be drowned in the seas around europe rather than allowing them to cross. And that caused a major shift for that particular moment. But in the broader i think framing, the idea that was pointed out is that this is about a framing of vulnerability gets lost at some point. And instead it just comes to stand in for the identity of a population. And thats when you have the phenomenon that becomes that shifts from the immediate crisis that these individuals face to a framing of a whole society as a crisis. And thats where i think you end up with the problems that weve been discussing. I should also note that the photos here on display, to your right immediately when you enter into the exhibit area, and it really hits you in the gut. Theres so much power to it. I would just say i do think that the photographs and exhibition and many photographs today do try to actively address their own position as, he was saying, privilege, as being able to speak for the problematic aspect of them speaking for an experience that is not thirs. A lot of photographs try to do something about that and i do think that a lot of photographs in this exhibition are also trying to portray something that you dont see in the media. There are obviously aspects of each of their images that are problematic. Those images being just sort of normal life. Each ordinary. Each are trying to address, like we can go forward to maybe after the clicker. No. Tell me where. Keep going. Something like this. You have a fashion photograph doing this kind of new imagery, taking a very common image that we see in quote unquote refugee photography of a mother and a child. But here, hes doing something fascinating is that he is referencing a whole history of african studio photography and selfportrait tur. So that when these people sit for his image they are actually referencing the tradition of selfportrattur in africa. And in that way showing that they are agents of their own creation. That they are individuals. So you see these photographs actively trying to do something that we dont commonly see. This is a challenge himself. He doesnt usually work this way. And he kind of came one this idea using plu in particular, using color. The choice of color in is a lot of these images is important as well. Color is not something you see in this subject matter because color also cannot tates life, action. Were used to black and white which conno tates crisis and drama and the past and horror. And its a smile. These are people a image were looking at. This seems to be their own portrait. Not a portrait he made. We only have a few minutes left in this conversation and we have to simply address the United States in 2016 and this Election Year and the conversation about immigrants, refugees, we have a president ial candidate i think we know who he is, might have heard of him who has said he could look into the eyes of a syrian refugee child and say im paraphrasing, you cannot come into this country. Sorry. I mentioned i was at the political conventions in cleveland. I heard a lot of people talking about refugees being a front for jihadis coming in. Refugees being a way for diseases to get into this country. What do you just this is open to anyone. What do you make about this tenor of the conversation about refugees this year versus years past . Just returning to where we gan which is 24 crisis frame helps entrench this. You can absolutely distort the facts. You can almost throw out anything. 60 million, 250 million. It would have been plausible at some level. You can say theres a crisis at border. Hwestern when in fact its the case of a net out migration from the community of the United States. It doesnt matter. Because the crisis we accept as the best way to understand this. And then the question is what solutions can we come up with . Walls, barriers, exclusion. I think it points to the need. Obviously crisis models are constantly throid for political strategic purposes and were witnessing that and theres nothing new about that i dont think. There are many shocking things about our current political moment but the deployment of crisis language and the depiction of refugees as a threat and so on resonates with our ordinary politics, unfortunately. So that isnt a poose to my mind thats extraordinary. Its just the depth of the toxic xenophobia. And its not just in the United States. In the west and globally. There we have a challenge of can we start thinking about global migration . Its worth noting that migration trands are only going to increase. Mobility is going to increase largely as a result of Climate Change more so than conflict. We know this now. We can address it by trying to come up with rational policies or we can do the ad hoc dance that has generated the toxic politics that weve seen in the United States and europe on a continuing basis. I think that would be a very poor choice. Our current political moment helps illustrate just how ugh ugly a choice it can be. I think that the current climate reminds me that conimages matter and that our passive consumption of images of immigrants and migrants and refugees as hoords of nameless and faceless people kind of invading. That those images that we may passively consume them, they have an impact on a lot of people and its important for us to seek out and support other venust that are showing other representations. The media, our everyday media does not have the space or the time supposedly to show images like what we see. You u might find it on a special section in the New York Times called the lens block but thats kind of a speck tral area. But how do we find the space in our everyday media to look more deeply and differently at these types of issues. I go back to history. All the thing that is you say that donald trump is saying that Syrian Refugees or other refugees will do. Bringing contamination, religious threat, mortal threat. Go back again and the chinese those were the same things being said about the chinese in the 19th century. They would bring evil, destroy the american family, undermine the american working man. And that they were considered completely ant thetcal to the american culture. So i dont believe that simply because syrians are muslims that somehow theyre different than other populations that have come to the u. S. Before. And the other thing about history that i think is important that typically europe and the United States have played a major role in shaping the historical conditions that have produced refugees in the first place. Go back far enough in history. The role that the u. S. And the u. S. Has played in the shaping of the middle east that has led to the crisis but we dont like to think about those kinds of things. And the fact that were in an economic supposedly economic crisis today. If you believe that. The crisis of globalization and of noo liberalism. We are putting the blame for the economic fallout of those things on refugees when refugees are only themselves the product of