Featured Exhibit/January 18, 2009

George Poutachidis Documents Plight of Afghan and Iraqi Refugees Living in Greece

In Port of Patras Refugee Camp, Greece, George Poutachidis documents the plight of as many as 2,000 refugees-many of them young men and children from Afghanistan and Iraq-who have made the Port of Patras Refugee Camp (Athens) their temporary home as they flee to Europe to escape war. The camp was established 13 years ago by Kurds fleeing Iraq. Most of its residents await entry into mainland Europe while living in dangerous conditions that are extremely unsanitary. Diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis are common and when it rains, the camp becomes a swamp.

John Sevigny , US photographer living in Mexico and author of Ladies' Bar, comments on Poutachidis' exhibit, "While the western media would have us believe that young men from these countries are all busy strapping bombs to their bodies, George shows us that quite a few have chosen to turn their backs on their homes, as painful as that may be, in order to escape violence...The great irony of this exhibition is that as the bombers head east, the immigrants head west, a wave of refugees of our own making, which meet the brutal force of the law and absurd immigration requirements."

Click here to View the Exhibit

Exhibitors' Home Pages
In our previous newsletter, we announced a new feature-exhibitor home pages. Here is a list of photographers who have created them since last week, with links to their pages:
Andarg� Asfaw
Richard Durnan
Najib Joe Hakim
Larry Louie
Daniel Miller
Claude Renault
Todd Shapera
Kemal Vural Tarlan
Frank Ward
John-Robert Ward II
Janine Wiedel

We hope all exhibitors will eventually take advantage of this feature.

SDN and Social Networking
SocialDocumentary is now on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Follow our tweets at Twitter; become a fan of SDN on Facebook, join our new SocialDocumentary group on LinkedIn

Working with NGO's
SDN encourages photographers to partner with non-governmental organizations while pursuing their documentary work.

• Todd Shapera has done tremendous work with the group EcoLogic to document deforestation in Honduras. Click here to visit Todd's exhibit on SDN.
• Larry Louie has documented global blindness and the work done by the Seva Canada Society to overcome this condition. Click here to view Larry's exhibit on SDN.
  

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