From Yemen to the Netherlands, a Photographer Focuses on Migration and Statelessness

With her project, The Passport, Thana Faroq documents the lives not just of stateless individuals, but also her own escaping conflict and later settling abroad.

Thana Faroq, “A refugee camp in Amsterdam in 2017,” from The Passport (2017–ongoing) (all images courtesy the artist)

THE HAGUE — In 2016, Yemeni documentary artist and storyteller Thana Faroq left her native Sana’a to begin a Master’s degree in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism at the University of Westminster in London. Not only was she leaving her home, but she was also leaving a war-zone, not knowing when or whether she’d ever be able to return and see her family again, and in what circumstances. She began to explore the experiences of people hindered by their passports — those asylum seekers, refugees and stateless individuals who are banned from entering certain countries — to confront what it means to be unable to migrate because of an identity document. As a result, The Passport (2017 – ongoing) was born — a body of work that Faroq has continued in the Netherlands, where she sought asylum, and which is the subject of a book and solo exhibition at Pulchri Studios.

Thana Faroq, “Ziynab, an asylum seeker in the Netherlands from Iran. She likes basketball and she plans to enroll in university as soon as she gets the residency” (2019), from The Passport (2017–ongoing)

The Passport centers on portraits of individuals photographed behind a pane of glass, trapped behind a border, with many of the subjects unable to escape violence and war in their own countries. In addition, these individuals provide statements about their own circumstances, opening up the stories of undocumented migrants.

Mirroring Faroq’s own story, The Passport depicts the transitory nature of restricted lives, capturing the hopes, fears, dreams, and struggles that come with attempting to survive in times of hardship, which are illustrated through images of men looking longingly out of windows and of children experiencing snow for the first time.

Thana Faroq, “As other children play among the yards of an autumn leaves-soaked refugee camp in the Netherlands, 8-year-old Basma, documented her journey to Europe. It was her way to express fear, pain and loss. But it was all washed away with the rain few minutes later…” (2017), from The Passport (2017–ongoing)

Thana Faroq, “A young girl living in a refugee camp witnesses snowfall for the first time in her life, Utrecht, the Netherlands” (December 2017), from The Passport (2017–ongoing)

Conducted between the UK, the Netherlands, and the Markazi camp in Djibouti, with the majority of images produced in various refugee centers across the Netherlands, The Passport also illustrates Faroq’s experience visiting a refugee camp in a port between the borders of Yemen and Djibouti, which exist with only a sea in between them. These images will be published in a book following the exhibition. “There were smugglers telling me ‘I can take you there and you can be back by sunset if you want’”, Faroq explains, “I kept fantasizing about meeting my family. For a second I thought about listening to the smuggler and going to Aden and seeing Yemen. Nobody would have to know. There are no checkpoint, but I’d lose my residency. So I kept being technical about it.”

Thana Faroq, “A poem on caravan wall (Markazi camp Djibouti)” (2019), from The Passport (2017–ongoing)

The Passport documents the lives not just of stateless individuals, but also Faroq’s own experience of escaping conflict, moving through London and settling in the Netherlands. But, it is just the start. “This is Chapter One”, she explains, “The Passport is going to be a book of many chapters. This was my healing, I feel empowered, it’s my own, it’s nobody’s to shape, it’s my own.”