Samuel Aranda

 Samuel Aranda is a photographer who made a route with Sirian refugees from Jordania to Serbia. One of his most famous photographs is one where in Lesbos, there is a family of Sirian refugees who arrive completely devastated and exhausted to the city and at the same time, there is a group of people who are in a bar without doing anything to help them. 

What shocked me the most about the picture was the fact that the people who are sitting in the bar are not even acknowledging the arrival of thoose refugees. They probably saw them and continued as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. This means that they probably see this situations on a daily basis and they do not even try to offer help to those people. The fact that these is a situatiojn that happens so often is so unthinkable to me, and I think that Samuel agreed with me on his video. 

In the video, Aranda also explained something that I did not know but found thought-provoking was that the majority of the refugees com from middle-class families, who could have perfectly afforded a trip in normal conditions and start a new life in a new place but instead, we are preventing them from doing so. We are letting people die and that mobs take these people's money when eventually, people are still going to come here. 

I think this kind of photography is one of my favourite ones because it is relevant to society. It's making people realise about the reality some people face on their daily life, it's trying to make the audience conscious. It's trying to change reality and its injustices, which is something art, such as photography, can do better than any other disipline.