Eyad Abou kasem

Photographer
  
Small forest on the other side
Public Project
Small forest on the other side
Copyright Eyad Abou kasem 2024
Updated Oct 2021
Location Würzburg
Topics Borders, Civil Wars, Community, Conceptual, Culture stories, Discrimination, Documentary, Family, Forest, Homelessness, Human Rights, Immigration, iPhone, Islam, Isolation, mass displacement, migration, Oppression, Photography, Politics, Revolution, Spotlight, War, War and its effects
I’m from Damascus, Syria and in the summer of 2015 I left for Europe, traveling overland to Turkey, crossing to Greece by boat. I traveled light, with my analog camera and 7 rolls of B&W film. From there I made my way up to Germany, where I applied for asylum and was assigned to a refugee camp close to Würzburg city.
Like everywhere in Germany, the city had to find places for all of the asylum seekers who arrived at the end of that year when the European borders opened for a golden short time. Dormitories, churches, sport halls and sometimes ″like in my case″ a military base on a hill away from the city.
Leaving my country and my family at war to be in a European safe country, living in a part of a military base in the (Mountain-Camp) as we used to call it filled me with conflicting feelings I’ve never felt before. They’re unsettling and weigh heavily, and are sometimes even absurd, regarding the upsetting conditions I find myself in, the survivor guilt or my foggy future.
The Story describe my feelings as a new refugee and invite the viewer inside my head, see what I see and read what I am thinking of, I also try to reflect on what my expectations about Europe was and my thoughts about journalism_the field that I count myself in_ and how we -the refugees- are pictured in it.
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