“Migrant hoax: The selfies that fooled the internet”
BBC Trending
“Migrant hoax: The selfies that fooled the internet”
BBC Trending
In the last two years more than one million immigrants have tried to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe in search of a better future. More than 10,000 have left their lives in that attempt. A sad reality that has been ignored by a large part of the Spanish population.
The edition of GetxoPhoto 2015 International Photography Festival focused on this theme. “The travels of those who have not chosen to travel”. To denounce this drama and bring to light this reality reaching the maximum possible audience, we decided to do acampaign using the weapons that the maximum audience are in, Social Media, and with the language this vast majority uses, the hashtags.
We documented the trip of Abdou Diof from Senagal to Spain, through a series of selfies in instagram. In each post Abdou reported first hand each stage of his journey using the most common hashtags with special irony to show how far we are from this reality in our idealized daily digital social life. After some media like The Huffington Post, Mirror; Swedish Svenska Dagbladet; Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, Vanity Fair; Cadena Ser, Cuatro, La Vanguardia; Portuguesse TVi 24, among many others around the world, reported on Abdou's trip as if it were real, the campaign went globally viral, giving tremendous attention to GetxoPhoto 2015 and the subject on which this issue was addressed.
Art Director: Javi Gracia Production Company: Volga Director: Manson