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Bertelsmann Stiftung 01/2019

People - not numbers

A photo book about Refugees in Germany

Who today does know what it feels like to be a refugee? To leave home, house, family, friends, everything and to run for your life?I actually don’t - even if I should. Sort of. For my parents and my grandparents were refugees at the end of the WWII. But they never spoke of the hardships they had to endure. You don’t need to have great imagination to understand that fear, horror, grief, agony and horror were constant companions of this journey. What it feels like? I don’t know.
So I set out to find out, who the people are that left everything behind from homes, houses to friends, families, jobs and wealth, to flee their country and come here. For two years since the beginning of 2017 I portrayed refugees in Hamburg, Germany. I accompanied them, taught German, helped them in dealing with authorities and they let me into their homes and allowed me to take their picture. In the news of flight and expulsion, we read of refugees often only as numbers and statistics. But take the background away and you will see: hopes and dreams, fears and worries just like by any other person in the world.
My project gives this refugees a voice just to remind everyone: it’s people that we are talking of, not numbers. Here are pictures that made it into my book „Menschen - keine Zahlen“, which was published by Bertelsmann Stiftung.​​Want to know more? Just write me.