First Nights in America: What Arriving as a Refugee Looks Like
For four years, Italian-born Gabriele Stabile photographed refugees in airports across the nation on the nights they first arrived on American soil. They came from Somalia and Ethiopia, from Burundi and Bhutan, from Iraq, from Burma. They were fleeing war, rape, torture. Their destinations were mysterious places called Alabama, North Dakota, and Texas. But before they settled into their new homes, entered their first megamalls, or celebrated their first Fourth of Julys, they met Stabile and his camera.
Their faces — bewildered, vulnerable, joyous — passed before his lens, and then disappeared from him forever. Or so he thought. In 2010, he met Juliet Linderman, now a reporter at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, who suggested the two track down Stabile’s subjects and gather their stories. A project was born.
See more. [Images: Gabriele Stabile]
This is such an incredible project!
FILM: The New Americans
“I was always upset by how unauthorized immigrants were dehumanized in their depiction,” says Jarman, who has lived in Mexico since 2004. “I wondered what could happen if there was a face to this human issue and people could better understand what was driving immigrants to move across the border.”
Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/06/25/marisol-and-the-american-dream-one-photographers-15-year-project/#ixzz2DXYcSKIU
FILM: The New Americans
For generations, the American Dream has been a pervasive part of our culture: work hard, and you and your children will be better off. But the country is different now than it was when it became known as the Land of Opportunity.
The United States no longer boasts a stable middle class. Instead, we have people getting by - not getting ahead. And the immigrant experience that first brought us the idea of the American Dream is radically different today.
FILMS: The New Americans
Source: wbez.org / WBEZ
