Selfie: Je suis refugee

The state of being a refugee is temporary, in theory, but without a place to go back to — a nation, a city, a home — limbo begins to look permanent, a designated space carved out of someone else’s country, where the basic needs of physical survival might be provided, but the human aspirations lose both their means and their direction.

Refugees are not only sequestered in space, they are incarcerated in time, walled-in between a past that’s been obliterated and a future that no longer exists.

Thanks to a donation from HTC, we have set off for refugee camps around Syria with a handful of smartphones, asking refugees to take a selfie of themselves. To reaffirm their existance, their identity, their personality. A way to look someone right in the eye and say “Hello this is me, I exist”.

When Murat looks at the smartphone camera to take a selfie, a smile appears on his face. It’s like a mirror and an open window to show who he is. I am Murat. Je suis a refugee.

• Murat Mustafa, 10 years old, from Kobane
• Emira 6 years old and her brother Hamid Elehmed, 9 years, from Aleppo
• Chian 15, Nalin 17, Larin 8, Meyede 16, Yara 11, Stervan 7, Nesrin 19 from Kobane
• Shadi Al Razaek, 26 and his wife Da’aa Lafi Esaa, 17 with their daughter Remash, 3 years old, from Daraa
• Berivan Xeci, 25 yars old, from Kobane, with her three daughters
• Meryem El-Elevi, 27 years old, from Homs
• Shirin Mohamed, 19 years old, her brother in law Mahmud Mohamed, 20, and baby Riyad, 5 months old, from Kobane
• Sidra Misso, 9 years old, from Kobane
• Tofan Mohamed, 15 years old and Sharvan Naibir, 14, both from Kobane
• Dara Alì, 12 years old, from Kobane
• Jiala Mustafa, 16 years old and her friend Gulistan Dewrie, 21, from Kobane
• Sabrin Emir, 15 and her friend Imen Elhalil 18, both from Aleppo
• Ammar El Khawalda, 15 years old, from a small village near Daraa
• Mirghana Seifadin, 7 years old, from Kobane
• Obeda Al Theeb, 24 and his wife Wafaa Al Hariri, 19, both from Daraa
• Semira Ahmed, 12 years old and her little sister Elin, 1 year, from Kobane
• Omeima Oshan, 13, from Damascus
• Jenin Az-Aldeen, 12 years old, from Jenin