Visual Representations of Refugees in German Media 2010 - 2020
By: Cassidy Chreene Whittle, M.S. GMC - German
Advisors: Dr. Britta Kallin, Associate Professor of German, and
Dr. Richard Utz, Chair and Professor, Literature, Media, and Communication
Migrants from Turkey arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos
taz.de / March 1, 2020 / photo by dpa
As a companion to the taz.de article “Fatale Dynamik” (Fatal dynamic) published on March 1, 2020, this photograph captioned “Migranten aus der Türkei kommen auf der griechischen Insel Lesbos an” (Migrants from Turkey arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos) and credited to the dpa shows a group of male refugees in a wooded area standing along a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
The photo has dark, muted tones and a tilted perspective from a low-angle shot, combining to create a rather intimidating atmosphere. Further bolstering the feeling of intimidation is also the young male refugee straddling the fence. Photographs similar to this featuring exclusively male migrants and brooding atmospheres were common and highly criticized during the height of the refugee crisis in late 2015 for the idea that the photographs were perpetuating the stereotype that asylum-seekers were only males, and the sprouting conspiracy that male migrants were inherently terrorists, yet here again in 2020 the same style of imagery portraying refugees resurfaces.
While the content of the article does not degrade refugees or refugee policy, but rather discusses the dire state of refugee affairs currently ensuing at the Turkey-Greece border after President Erdogan encouraged refugee to cross the border, despite the border not yet being officially opened for refugee passage, the use of such a photograph as the visualization for the disseminating of news sets the practice of ethical visual representations of refugees back years.