Between Burma and a Hard Place

(Nowhere People, 2012)(Nowhere People, 2012)Though ostensibly a photo book, Exiled to Nowhere serves as a vivid collection of reportage that few magazines could (or, these days, would) deliver. Photojournalist Greg Constantine takes us to the Burma-Bangladesh border, where tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees live in crowded, dirty camps. A minority long prosecuted by the Burmese government, the Rohingya live in a state of perpetual fear and uncertainty. Their pervasive sense of living essentially “nowhere” is what Constantine successfully captures in his latest book.

Whereas Saiful Huq Omi’s powerful photographic work for the Magnum Foundation traces the wider diaspora of the Rohingya living in England, Malaysia, and Bangladesh, Constantine’s book focuses primarily on the tense border region inhabited by tens of thousands of Rohingya.

Shot in stark black and white, Constantine’s photos subvert any romantic notions of what it’s like to be a working documentary photographer, instead evoking the patience and commitment required. Constantine shot the series over the course of eight different trips, between 2006 and 2012.

Detained RohingyaA group of Rohingya men are detained at a highway checkpoint in southern Bangladesh.
The 92 photos in the book detail life in various refugee camps, showing the monotony and struggles of daily life. They give a sense of who these people are: In the different camps, among the different families, a repetition of a muddy, difficult, yet somehow self-sure existence emerges.

Kutupalong Makeshift Camp Greg ConstantineOver the last 20 years, legions of Rohingya have fled their homeland and now live as unrecognized refugees in neighboring Bangladesh. Some 20,000 live in the squalid environs known as Kutupalong Makeshift camp.
The book’s accompanying interviews and text provide important context: Reading about how Thai authorities pushed boats full of Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees out to sea—many of them to their deaths—or about how others were threatened and viciously beaten in Burma, adds that much more impact to the photos.

Tal Makeshift Camp A woman and her grandchild sit on the side of the road at the Tal Makeshift Camp near the town of Teknaf. Most Rohingya in southern Bangladesh are not recognized as refugees and receive little or no humanitarian assistance.
The bar is high when it comes to grabbing the attention of readers (and photo editors) with projects focused on human rights in desolate places. It’s refreshing to get yanked out of that jaded place by a successful project like Constantine’s.
 

A group of Rohingya men push their fishing boat back onto shore. Most Rohingya men in the Shamlapur area of Bangladesh work as bonded laborers and are trapped into debt to local Bangladeshi boat owners.A group of Rohingya men push their fishing boat back onto shore. Most Rohingya men in the Shamlapur region of Bangladesh work as bonded laborers and are trapped in debt to local Bangladeshi boat owners.
Exiled to Nowhere
is the second book in a longer term project called Nowhere People, a documentation of stateless people around the world in places including Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia, Ukraine, and Bangladesh. (Constantine’s first book, Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now, was published in November 2011.) It’s an ambitious undertaking, and perhaps one that only a thoroughly committed photographer like Constantine could pull off.


If you buy a book using a Bookshop link on this page, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate