Ideas worth spreading

What photos don't tell you about the refugee experience

31,949 views | Brian Sokol • TEDxSanDiego

How do we grasp the individual humanity of millions of displaced people? Artist, author and photographer Brian Sokol has been trying to do this from behind a lens, documenting refugee camps and engaging with people who live in them. He shares how disrupting incomplete narratives and letting refugees tell their own stories changed his own preconceptions about what it means to be displaced, conjuring up familiar images of play, love, and family.

How do we grasp the individual humanity of millions of displaced people? Artist, author and photographer Brian Sokol has been trying to do this from behind a lens, documenting refugee camps and engaging with people who live in them. He shares how disrupting incomplete narratives and letting refugees tell their own stories changed his own preconceptions about what it means to be displaced, conjuring up familiar images of play, love, and family.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxSanDiego, an independent event.

Read more about TEDx.

About the speaker

Brian Sokol

Photographer/Artist/Author

Brian Sokol is an artist, photographer and author dedicated to documenting human rights issues and humanitarian crises worldwide. Since 2012 he has focused on telling the stories of refugees, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and stateless people in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. His goal is to engender empathy and action in audiences across the lines of language, race, religion and culture.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxSanDiego, an independent event.

Read more about TEDx.