7 Using Old Photographs to Gain New Perspectives on Refugees, Past and Present
7 Using Old Photographs to Gain New Perspectives on Refugees, Past and Present
Sonya de Laat
In the summer of 2018 an unprecedented number of people claiming to be refugees crossed into Canada at unofficial border points. Many Canadians learned of these events through photographs and other visual media circulating through the press. Responding to such images, public reaction in Canada has been mixed. While some people support actions aimed at helping these families and individuals, others have sensationalized the situation by labelling it a “crisis” and calling border-crossers “illegals” or “queue jumpers.”
It is not the photographs on their own that have contributed to this ambivalence, since “photographs are mute”. Photographs take their meaning from the words around them: captions, news anchor statements, accompanying articles, or even the “narrative templates in our own minds.”1 Responses such as those that surfaced this summer are not new. Indeed, they are reflective of a historical pattern of response towards refugees over the past century. Looking at one set of photographs from that era can give us another perspective on current debates and remind us of the powerful role photography plays in mediating social relations.
There is a little-known collection of photographs made by Lewis Hine for the American Red Cross (ARC) at the tail end and immediately following the Great War. The ARC hired Hine because of his reputation as America’s foremost photographer of social reform issues. Hine had trained as a sociologist and an educator. He was not a journalist, but rather a social reformer whose main medium of advocacy was the camera. By the mid-1910s, Hine had developed a reputation as “the most extensive and successful photographer of social welfare work in [America].”2 During the First World War, his positive portrayals of refugees served the ARC well in their development as America’s foremost relief agency .
This dive into the ARC and Lewis Hine archives is meant to contribute to reflections on new directions for humanitarian photography that take into consideration historical legacies of particular practices around the use of photography, and to reflect on the role of photography in influencing or changing peoples’ perceptions. It’s in this sense that Hine’s photographs give insight into the cycles of rising and falling sympathy towards refugees that have occurred over the past century and the role of the mobilization of photography therein.
A group of people “that appeared in the public arena virtually overnight,”3 the term “refugee” was resurrected during the Great War’s early years, expanding from its original meaning of religious persecution to encompass all people fleeing persecution and seeking safety. Representing them as “hapless wartime victims”, Hine’s photographs allowed Europe’s refugees to stake a claim on American sentiments, however briefly. Indeed, the ARC’s sympathetic portrayal of refugees during the height of the war had alr