SEVEN DOORS is a long-term documentary project by photographer Greg Constantine. The project explores how governments are increasingly using detention as a significant component of immigration and asylum policy and exposes the impact, trauma and human cost detention has on asylum seekers, refugees, stateless people and migrants around the world.
Today, an unprecedented number of people worldwide have fled conflict, disaster, human rights abuse and poverty and have left their homes in search of safety, sanctuary and a better life. Simultaneously, the dialog and debate over issues of immigration and national security have grown more intertwined, intolerant and extreme.
As a result, a record number of men, women and children are being apprehended and locked away for months or even years for non-violent, civil immigration offenses. Detained administratively as their cases are being heard, or as their asylum claims are being considered or as they await deportation, they are removed from society and languish in an ever expanding web of prison-like immigration detention centers. The psychological trauma and collateral damage detention has not only on the detained but also on family, friends and others is long-lasting and often paralyzing.
SEVEN DOORS aims to look beyond the physical architecture of immigration detention. It aims to share not only the darker personal stories of struggle but also the inspiring stories of survival from detention and the efforts being made to find alternatives and combat these unjust policies. Through these stories, the project hopes to expose the injustices and opaque and Kafkaesque policy structures governments put in place that fuel the detention of vulnerable non-citizens around the world. Most importantly, the project aims to explore how immigration detention affects human lives.
SEVEN DOORS is a multiple year project, spanning several different countries and regions: from Malaysia and Thailand to the United States, Mexico and Eastern Europe.
Each chapter of the project will be released as an independently published, print-zine called the SEVEN DOORS Journal. The Journal can be ordered online (not inclusive of shipping). Copies of each issue will also be distributed to local and international organizations, educators, activists and others as a way to promote understanding and encourage discussion and debate. Each chapter will be published as an expanded version on www.7doors.org, incorporating additional photographs, audio, text, graphics and multimedia. Plus much more...
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SEVEN DOORS was a sponsored project by Blue Earth Alliance, a non-profit organization with 501(c)3 status in the US
ABOUT GREG CONSTANTINE
Greg Constantine is an independent documentary photographer, author and researcher who has dedicated his career to stories and projects that focus on human rights, inequality, identity and the power of the State. He spent eleven years working on the acclaimed projectNowhere People, (2006-2016) which was a global exploration documenting the lives and struggles of individuals and ethnic communities around the world who had had their citizenship denied or stripped from them by governments, mostly because of discrimination and intolerance.
He is the author of three books: Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now (2011) andExiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya (2012) which was selected as a 2012 Notable Photo Book of the Year by the Independent on Sunday in the UK, the Christian Science Monitor and PDN Magazine in the US and was a finalist for the 2013 IPA Photo Book Asia Award. His third book, Nowhere People(2015) was named a 2015 Notable Photo Book of the Year by PDN Magazine and was named one of the Top Ten Photo Books of 2015 by Mother Jones Magazine.
He is the recipient of grants from the Open Society Foundation's Justice Initiative, the International Migration Initiative and the Documentary Photography Project, including an Audience Engagement Grant and selection for the prestigious group exhibition, Moving Walls 19. He is a multiple grant recipient from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Oak Foundation. He has also received support from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Refugees International, MSF, Human Rights Watch and American Jewish World Service. Since 2006 he has received non-profit fiscal sponsorship from the Seattle-based photography organization, Blue Earth Alliance.
Exhibitions of his work have been held in over 40 cities worldwide including: London, Madrid, Budapest, Dublin, Geneva, Brussels, Perpignan, Belgrade, Rome, Kiev, The Hague, Sydney, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Yangon, Tokyo, Nairobi, Kampala, Banjul, Chicago, Washington DC and at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
He has given lectures and presentations at over 25 schools and universities in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa and in 2016 was invited to speak at TEDxEastEnd in London. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with the International State Crime Initiative. In late 2016 he earned his PhD from Middlesex University in the UK. This past year he was a 2017-2018 Artist in Residence on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada. In 2018/2019 he was an Independent Research Fellow with the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) in the UK.
SEVEN DOORS has been supported with grants and funding from:
The Oak Foundation, The Open Society Foundations, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, NEO Philanthropy & Blue Earth Alliance.
