London student's photo project reveals untold stories of Paris camp refugees

A London medical student is hoping to show the untold stories of refugees living in a crowded migrant camp through a new series of unseen photos.

The collection of photographs, taken on disposable cameras by young men living in the refugee camp, will go on display in a new exhibition in east London next month.

Amy Lineham, from Islington, visited the crowded refugee camp in northern Paris earlier this year and said she was struck by the stories of people she met.

But in a bid to help change the way refugees were often portrayed in the media, the UCL student launched her project Disposable Perspectives with friend and fellow student Rhona Fleming.

“I was in the Paris camp for five weeks,” Ms Lineham told the Standard. “Lots of journalists would come and ask a couple of questions, mainly to the volunteers, take a couple of pictures.

“They might interact with one person in the camp but it felt really detached. And these were the people who really thought they were engaging in the story.

“The other thing, it was a men’s camp which is the group which is most maligned in the media. There was some real myths to be debunked.”

The 23-year–old said she then came up with the idea of handing out disposable cameras and blank postcards to people around the Porte de la Chappelle camp.

“I passed on the cameras. They came with an instruction sheet telling them they could take photos of whatever they wanted.

“And a really nice guy who spoke five or six languages, he translated the set of instructions.”

The cameras came back with more than 180 photos.

“The photos are actually really interesting,” Ms Lineham said.

“People have taken it in really different directions in that there’s one guy who used up his entire roll in 15 minutes, taking photos all around him.

“Other people have really experimented. There’s one guy who has taken some photos through fences.

“There’s a lot of people smiling. When I have looked at all the pictures altogether, what really draws your eye is how many smiles there are.

“What I’m really glad comes through, they are just boys who happened to be in Paris and have found themselves in difficult circumstances.

“It shows these people are individuals with 24/7 lives in the same way as everyone else. They are not defined by the fact they are refugees but they are first and foremost young men who are refugees”.

The exhibition is being held at the Hive in Dalston from June 2. It runs from June 3 to 9 with the exception of June 4.