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Background information
"In order to approach the contemporary migratory crisis while avoiding the sensational iconography overflowing in the media, the photographer Mathias BENGUIGUI chose the path of history, that of the island of Lesbos where two stories of migrations exist side by side: the current one, in everyone's mind, and the one that saw 45,000 Orthodox Greeks arriving on the island fleeing Atatürk's Turkey in 1922.
Content
This photo volume, 'Les Chants de L'Asphodele' (The Songs of Asphodel) by Mathias BENGUIGUI in cooperation with the writer Agathe Kalfas, draws from both these historical strata. By breaking with current events, the French photographer opens a poetic space where landscapes and portraits are mixed in dialogue with the texts of Agathe Kalfas and those of Greek poets of the twentieth century, and invite us into the thickness of the daily life of the island." (© Bec en l'air, 2021)