Depicting the pain of others: Photographic representations of refugees in the Aegean Shores

Europe faces a refugee crisis of historic proportions. Greece has yet again become the principal site of an ever-unfolding humanitarian calamity. The refugee crisis has brought to the Aegean shores a motley crew of humanitarian activists, journalists, artists and photographers offering relief and documenting the plight of suffering populations fleeing war and destruction. Appeals, reports and photographs circulate across the globe on a daily basis. Borrowing Susan Sontag’s well known dictum, the essay offers a commentary on some key aspects of the visual economy of the refugee crisis and registers some preliminary thoughts on the relation between the current moment and past visual vocabularies of suffering and displacement.