As part of an artist in residence project at BATARTLAB, (Batman, Turkey) in 2015, I worked with a group of Yazidi refugees who had recently fled from ISIS in Sinjar province in Iraq. They were living in an unregistered camp in Batman town centre and being supported by the local community in a disused building. My project stemmed from the idea of creating an alternative form of representation of displacement, to go beyond sensational images of suffering and sadness seen in the news to show a more human perspective, of a daily reality of ‘home’ for people that were between one life and another that they were hoping to find. What struck me at the time was a sense of futility and powerlessness, of being stuck within a broader political migration system that they knew little about, and yet could not make steps to move away from. In the meantime, all they could do was wait.

The photographs in this series are taken by the residents themselves on disposable cameras that I distributed among residents, over the course of a few days at the camp. I asked participants to take pictures of things that were important to them, family, friends, the place that they slept, and any other details or objects that gave them a sense of home. These are intimate images of family life, trying to hold onto a sense of home in a place none of them wanted to be.

This work was presented at Dis/Placed Exhibition at Counterpoints Arts