Interview
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In “I Peri N’Tera”, the British photographer of Spanish origin follows migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean, in order to “offer an alternative” to the cruel media treatment.
It’s an exhibition that fits in one room but goes from Lampedusa to Senegal, via Sicily. On this island, where Daniel Castro Garcia spent many months, he forged ties with those who risked their lives on the deadliest migratory route in the world, the Mediterranean. Far from any aestheticization, he delivers an intimate and powerful work, begun in 2015 and continued over the long term thanks to the prizes received along the way – in particular the W. Eugene Smith Prize, in 2017. Wednesday morning, he concluded an informal presentation by evoking, the voice filled with emotion, the most recent photo of the exhibition. Taken in 2020 in Paris, it shows the string of miniature Eiffel towers sold by a young man met in Sicily and who became a street vendor at the Trocadero.
It is in reaction to the media treatment of the “migration crisis” this project started?
My work started in April 2015 after two boats capsized in the Mediterranean, killing between 750 and 1,000 people. The reaction of the English media and the vocabulary used by some to qualify those who made this trip to Europe really troubled me. My parents are Spanish. They emigrated to the UK in 1970. So I felt the need to explore the subject myself and try to create images that could counteract the propaganda imagery at work, which only stir up fear. To offer a less tragic, less crushing alternative…