A Dream Of Europe
by Jacob Ehrbahn
(Dewi Lewis, £35)

A DREAM of Europe is a forceful reminder that at the other end of policy decisions and behind the numbers and statistics, there are real people, refugees and migrants who dream of a better life on this continent and in these images Danish photographer Jacob Ehrbahn documents the trials of individuals and families fleeing war, poverty and oppression.

In spring last year he visited the Moria camp on Lesbos, where around 20,000 people were living in extremely primitive conditions, some 40 per cent of them children.

According to Doctors Without Borders, many had lost their will to live with a growing number exhibiting self-harming behaviour and many, suffering from anxiety, withdrawn. Six months later the camp was burnt down and Ehrbahn again visited to document the aftermath.

In his images, we see the frightened faces of men tossed into the sea after their boat capsizes in the Mediterranean, children screaming, mothers desperate and at the end of their tether — human beings deserted by their fellow citizens.

This is an exodus of monumental proportions but it is no longer of interest to those who run our media in the West.

(L to R) Six-year-old Kamaluddin from Afghanistan lives in the Moria camp, Lesbos, with his parents and four siblings; (above right) December 15 2018 - in former refrigerator factory in Bihać, Croatia, Camp Bira houses around 2,200 refugees

What Ehrbahn, though, doesn’t show — and perhaps can’t show — is the apocalyptic situations from which these refugees are fleeing and the threads that link their predicament to the wars fomented and financed by faceless profit-seeking companies elsewhere and dictatorships kept in power by cynical outside forces.

By ignoring these desperate people and simply closing our borders to them, we think we can absolve ourselves of guilt and responsibility.

What is somewhat disturbing about the images is that they are almost all in very bright colour, conveying an almost fairground, festive atmosphere rather than the desperation and squalor that they are supposed depict.

There is a shot of a group of men in the water, held afloat by bright orange life jackets, which looks almost as if they are on a day’s outing to the sea. Another, looking like a staged still for a Hollywood film, shows a family crawling under a razor-wire fence to enter fortress Europe,

A dense camping site, nestling under a flyover could have been taken at a music festival, with its collection of multicoloured tents.

Perhaps this is an unjust criticism but shooting in black and white would have underscored this humanitarian crisis more forcefully.

More than a million refugees and migrants headed for Europe in 2015 and the flow is ceaseless. It caused the EU’s asylum system to collapse and member states are focused on keeping as many refugees as possible out.

But razor-wire fences, tear gas, border controls, rigorous asylum procedures and lack of humanitarian assistance could not stop those trying to escape war, poverty and oppression. On 19 trips from 2015 to 2020. Ehrbahn photographed people who have fled to Europe with a dream of a better life.

“I have watched as people drowned in the Mediterranean Sea,” he says. “I’ve seen families break out in tears or shouts of joy when they reached the stony beaches of Lesbos in flimsy rubber dinghies. I have seen overcrowded reception centres and makeshift ‘jungle’ camps on the Greek islands of Samos and Lesbos.”

Since 2015, many countries have imposed more asylum restrictions and the EU has entered into financial agreements with Turkey, Libya and other African nations to stem the stream of migrants.

Those who make it are still faced with chaos and extreme danger on their journeys. They have to navigate a landscape peopled with brutal border police, human traffickers and racists. They don’t meet many people who wish them well.

“If you ask them what they dream of,” Ehrbahn says, “most say they would like to go to a country where they have family or friends. Others simply wish to find any peaceful country that would grant them asylum so they can live legally in the safety of Europe. They themselves are willing to go through fire and water for their children.

“Yet in the midst of the misery, some people are able to adapt to the most inhumane conditions and create an everyday life with a structure of sorts.

“It is also possible to catch a glimpse of occasional life-affirming moments, such as when children can forget time and space for a while and just laugh and play, or when very young men inside a worn-out industrial building can make an effort to prepare the best possible meal out of few ingredients.”

A Dream of Europe is published on April 26.