Enri Canaj

Biography:
Enri Canaj was born in Tirana, Albania, in 1980. He spent his early childhood there and moved with his family to Greece in 1991, immediately after the opening of the borders. He is based in Athens and covers stories in Greece and the Balkans.

He studied photography at the Leica Academy in Athens. In 2007 he took part in a British Council project on migration, attending a year-long workshop with Magnum photographer Nikos Economopoulos.

Since 2008, he has been a freelance photographer for major publications such as Time Magazine Lightbox, CNN Photo Blogs, New York Magazine, msnbc Photography, Vice Magazine Newsweek, Paris Match, Le monde Diplomatique, Burn Magazine, Foto8 Magazine London, Gup Magazine, Feature Shoot, sample of his work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki (“In a Sharpe of Frame”, personal exhibition), BOZAR Center for Fine Arts, Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece in Athens and Salonica, at the Bilgi Santral in Istanbul, the European Parliament in Brussels and the Athens Photo Festival. He has been working in the Balkans, mainly Kosovo and Albania, as well as Greece, focusing on migration and the recent crisis. Winner of the juried JGS Content, 1st Quarter 2013.

Exhibition:
As the civil war in Syria gets worse, day by day, the number of refugees constantly increases. Greece is the entrance point for Syrian refugees who try to reach Europe. Nowadays 80 percent of the refugees coming to Greece are from Syria. Unfortunately, many of them never complete their trip. They drown in the Mediterranean Sea.

Since the start of 2015, the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean are estimated to have received more than 48,000 people from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Lesvos is on the front line of this wave of arrivals.

At the Kara Tepe camp in Lesvos the conditions are horrible. No good structures, no hygienic conditions and few volunteers trying to help and provide services for the arrivals, especially women and children. Demands for baby formula, clothing and medicine are constant.

Of course lunch time is the most difficult hour inside the camp. There are so many people waiting to have their meal and a very small number of people handout it.

But Greece is only their first station. No one wants to stay here. Their goal is to reach Germany and after a few days in Greece their odyssey continues towards north Greece. Refugees second station is Macedonia, immediately after cams Serbia, Hungary and Germany last.

They cannot use any transport way. Even not a taxi because the law prohibits to taxi driver to offer services to foreigners without permitting papers. So they have to walk for to many kilometers on foot crossing other raff obstacles.

In base of how fast they can move, at least other 3 days have Greece on the map.

There are so many children, older people, others with physical disabilities and all of this makes the journey much harder. All together in big groups shearing the same pain and fatigue, helping and taking care of each other. The tension of getting caught by the police authorities accompanied them every minute. Despite this, they say they’re still lucky! Lucky because they survived and escaped war and this give them strength to keep going and hoping.

This post is also available in: Turkish