New photo exhibit at Pier 21 sheds light on major international migrations

A photo of a mountain of discarded life jackets in Lesbos, Greece, gets to the heart of a new exhibit opening at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax on Wednesday.

The exhibit is called Crossing Lines: A New Age of Migration. It's a selection of images taken by two freelance photographers, Darren Ell and Roger LeMoyne, who live in Montreal and travel the world. The photos all feature people involved in recent international migrations.

Ell, who captured the image of the life jackets, said the Greek island is where many refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan landed as they fled conflict in 2015 and 2016.

"I visited the site where they were dumping all the life jackets ... there were hundreds of thousands of them just piled everywhere," Ell told CBC Radio's Mainstreet Halifax.

"I took quite a bit of time there because it was certainly revealing to me in the sense the life jackets, for me, they represented individuals who had kind of been neglected and were lumped here. It had a certain resonance for me."

Dan Conlin, the curator of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, worked with Ell and LeMoyne to put the exhibit together.

An image from the exhibit that stands out to him shows ethnic Rohingya crossing into Bangladesh from Myanmar. It was taken by LeMoyne in 2016.

"It's a vast shot of many people crossing a river border, little children emerging from muddy water and a baby in a basket. What I really like about Roger and Darren's work is you get these big-scale, on-the-spot looks, but also the people are front and centre," Conlin told Mainstreet.

Conlin said in addition to shots taken in the field, there are also portraits of refugees who are now in Canada to "sharpen up the individual experience."

One of his other favourites is the portrait of a Syrian refugee named Hala in Montreal.

"Her look of pain and reflection is just so powerfully conveyed. The lighting is so delicate, it reminds of Vermeer's [Girl with a Pearl Earring] portrait," Conlin said.

"What I think is really significant about the work you see in Crossing Lines, it's easy when you look at recent history of these big news stories to lose track of the individuals and there's an amazing humanizing quality of this photo exhibition that helps create empathy and understanding of what many migrants are going through."

Conlin said LeMoyne and Ell prepared written context for each photo in the exhibit. He said Pier 21 is the perfect venue as the new exhibit will sit next to the museum's permanent display that shares the history of Canada's refugee policy.

"The combination of their intensive humanizing view and then the historical context we can provide makes this a show worth really seeing," Conlin said.

Ell said as a photographer, he feels it's his responsibility to make sure the images in this exhibit are seen.

"It's important to send a message, to get it out there, because it can be a catalyzing thing for public opinion, for public policy," he said.

Taking these kinds of photos, Ell said, has made him more worldly and fortunate to be in Canada.

"It can make you question what you read, what you hear, it can make you much more compassionate and empathetic to people you meet."

Crossing Lines: A New Age of Migration opens on Wednesday and runs until March 24 at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.