Third Place

"Passengers"

Mediterranean Sea, 1 August 2016. Amadou (16), from Mali, poses for a portrait minutes after being rescued on the Mediterranean Sea, 20 nautical miles off the Libyan coast by a rescue vessel provided by the NGO Jugend Rettet. On 1st August 2016, 118 people were rescued from a rubber boat drifting in the Mediterranean. One more of the hundreds of boats that have been rescued from this migratory route in the past years. Only in 2016, when historical records were beaten, 181.436 migrants were rescued safe, while 4.576 lost their lives. But who is behind these numbers? What is the identity of the victims and survivors of this journey? In an attempt to put name and face to this reality, I carried out this series composed of 118 portraits of all the people who traveled on board the same boat, taken minutes after their rescue, once on board of the rescue vessel Iuventa. Their faces, their looks, the marks on their body… reflect the mood and physical state in which they are in a moment that marked their lives.