Location: Main Level, North and Center Galleries
Peter Turnley is an award-winning American photojournalist (b. 1955, Fort Wayne, IN) currently living in France. Working in more than ninety countries, he and his twin brother, David, have documented most of the world's major conflicts, resultant humanitarian crises, and critical political moments from the 1980s to the present day. As such, the corpus of his photographic work serves to encapsulate the world history of the late twentieth and early twenty-frst centuries. Beyond capturing world leaders and wars, Turnley's brilliantly colored photographs document what he calls the "human condition" -- fleeting moments of love, laughter, anguish, and brutality, experienced by everyday people.
The photographs on view in this exhibition relate to Turnley's ongoing photo essay Refugees -- The World's Homeless. They depict individuals from Ertrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda, Chechnya, and Kosovo who were internally displaced, or forced to leave their country, seeking asylum to escape war, persecution, poverty, and famine.
Currently, thousands of Ukrainians wait at the US-Mexico border, seeking asylum. More than 4,000,000 people have fled Ukraine since February 24, 2022. According to the Pew Research Center, the Ukrainian refugee crisis represents the sixth-largest displaced population in the last sixty years. The video included in the exhibition highlights Turnley's current documentation of displaced Ukrainian people fleeing Russia's unprovoked invasion of their sovereign nation.
Image: A train arrives carrying Nazran civilians who fled the war in Grozny, Nazran, Russia, 1995.
