Spuren der Flucht - Migration I Mauern I Menschenwürde
Since seven years, the photojournalist Klaus Petrus has been documenting escape routes through the Balkans to the EU countries. On these journeys, he lived with migrants in barracks, traveled with smugglers, crossed borders illegally with refugees, documented the violence of border police - and experienced a lot of humanity despite it all.
Migration is not only the big issue of our time, but also one that threatens to divide society into for or against - there is hardly any room for nuances. Klaus Petrus engages with refugees on an equal footing and, with his black and white photographs and narratives, shows the everyday life of people on the run, thus revealing the normality of a situation that is anything but normal.
There is, for example, the story of the Afghan Khalil, who after 1000 days on the run considers returning to his homeland, an Iraqi who pays off his debts as a smuggler, or the 70-year-old Samira from Pakistan, who has been stuck in Bosnia with her grandson for years. However, he encounters not only tragic and hopeless situations, but also many bizarre moments, moments of happiness, as well as love and hope. Klaus Petrus' images and stories cast an unusual light on migration - shaking up our entrenched image of refugees.
Klaus Petrus
Klaus Petrus was a philosophy professor at the University of Bern until 2012. Then he set off to the crisis regions of this world: Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, South Sudan, Ukraine. And repeatedly to the Balkan route, where he has been documenting escape stories since 2016. Since then, he has been working as a photojournalist and reporter. He reports on poverty, exclusion, migration, and wars from Switzerland, the Balkans, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2022, Klaus Petrus was awarded the Swiss Press Photo Award for his long-term project on migration. In 2023, his book "Am Rand" was published, featuring reports and portraits of people on the margins of our society.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
