“I Am Not Your Animal” by Photographer Aline Deschamps
Aline Deschamps is a Thai-French photographer at the moment based mostly in Beirut, Lebanon. Passionate about geopolitics and visible arts, Deschamps’ work tackles social problems this sort of as id, exile, and cultural heritage. In her hottest collection, “I Am Not Your Animal,” she follows the day-to-day life of Sierra Leonean migrant domestic staff she fulfilled in Beirut in 2020, documenting their encounters in Beirut and their reintegration back again into their homeland in 2022.
“The series’ title stems from the discussions I had with this group of girls, most of whom experienced escaped from abusive homes and ended up victims of human trafficking,” Deschamps explains. “During the exchanges, all of them shared how significantly they felt dehumanized once they set foot in Lebanon. One sentence kept remaining repeated: ‘They did not address me like a human, they treated me like an animal.’”
“‘I Am Not Your Animal’ aims to translate this intersectional expertise of staying a black migrant woman in Lebanon, experiencing systemic racism in a country in which the black overall body is usually minimized to one placement: the a single of a ‘servant’. It also wishes to translate a far more latent and private violence: the a single of getting stranded in a international nation, and of trying to talk the unspeakable with the family members again household. By juxtaposing these women’s letters with their each day existence pics, the task highlights their resilience located in exile, the distressing reintegration into their culture, and the outstanding bond of motherhood which enabled equally sacrifices and the responsibility of survival – irrespective of the length.”
See more from “I Am Not Your Animal” beneath.
