SOS

Marcos Moreno
Photo taken from Marcos Moreno's post in Timeline Photos

Today I walked through Casemates almost in tears.  I am rarely given to displays of emotion, public or otherwise, neither am I given to demonstrations of sentimentality.  If tears are going to turn up they usually  do so at certain times of the month and are associated with bouts of hormone-induced rage.

But today I had a browse around the exhibition at the Gustavo Bacarisas Exhibition Gallery at Casemates Square, Gibraltar, and the stark reality of human suffering portrayed by the images hung on its otherwise bare walls were intensely moving.

SOS is an exhibition by La Linea photographer Marcos Moreno, documenting the day to day trials of existence and survival for the people who seek a new life in Europe by crossing as best they can the Straits of Gibraltar, people fleeing terror and crisis and debilitating poverty, war, persecution and endless suffering at home.  The exhibition has been organised by the JM Foundation.  There is no entry fee, only donations are requested,  all of which go to the various JM Foundation projects working to improve the living conditions and opportunities for migrants from North Africa.  Quoted in local Campo de Gibraltar newspaper "La Verdad", Moreno claims to want to use his images of the dramatic truth of the lives these migrants endure in order to draw public attention to their plight and perhaps that way contribute towards helping improve their lives.  In this exhibition, he goes beyond depicting just those joyful moments of rescue to demonstrating the hardships endured by those who hide in caves in the mountains of Morocco to wait for passage on a flimsy dingy and row across what are frequently treacherous waters, narrow though the strip of sea dividing North Africa and Europe might be.

Photo from Marcos Moreno's post in Timeline Photos

The silence of the gallery, where only the echoes of my slow footsteps could be heard, added to the poignancy of the images: men curled in blankets on the edge of plastic, makeshift shelters, exhaustion etched on their faces, eyes hollow from the traumas they have witnessed; women too shattered to weep; children reaching out to grasp the lifeline thrown at them by the Red Cross workers; a single Guardia Civil, masked in case of contamination, keeping a surly distance from these poor souls who have nothing left but their skinny, tortured selves.  There are bony men hunkered down amidst dirt and litter to try and eke out some rest, perhaps some food if they have been able to get hold of some.

At the centre of the floor of the first room there is a white grave, in its hollow some earth, by the headstone, a blanket is draped in haphazard folds as if the dead had awoken and left in a hurry.  Perhaps the grave marks the spot where lie the remains of someone who at least had received a burial.  This grave is the model of an image that hangs just behind it; the same grave, but in the image, curled in his blanket lies a young man, lost in sleep, because lying in someone else's grave is somehow safer, more sheltered, than another night on the streets.

There are images depicting joy too: rescues at sea, hot food doled out to the starving; a man throwing his arms up perhaps in supplication, perhaps in thanks to his rescuers; a rescue worker playing in an impromptu game with some delighted children.  It was that image, I think, that moment of emotional rescue where a child became a child again, that triggered the tears.

A final image; exhausted faces behind bars.  Because that is how we, in Europe, fat on fast food and Christmas cheer, treat those fleeing war and persecution, forgetting how our own grandparents fled persecution across our own continent.  

I left the Gallery a bit wiser as to the plight of refugees, a little guilty at my own complacency and hugely angry at the pathetic circling round the nub of the problem by our elected and well-paid politicians.

Surviving in a cave waiting for the next stage in the journey - an image from Marcos Moreno's SOS exhibition from Marcos Moreno's post in Timeline Photos

Outdoors, my eyes smarted - not from the emotion, but from the red and white and tinsel-laden tackiness of the commercial world around me.  The lump in my throat could not have stomached a single mince pie.  I put the cost of it and more into the donation box instead.  I'm not sure what else to do, but at least I know what is happening, and I can tell as many as will read this.  And they can put their bit into improving life for these poor scraps of humanity, in the collection box and at the ballot box.  And I have Marcos Moreno to thank for that.