Australian photographer Chris Peken starkly captures the human face of the world refugee crisis in an upcoming exhibition, The Lost Boys Of Sudan.
Showing as part of the Head On Photo Festival in Sydney, Peken's series of black-and-white portraits of South Sudanese exiles were taken in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.
His subjects are some of the 20,000 boys who fled their villages in South Sudan during the bloody Second Sudanese Civil War that raged from 1983 to 2005.
Ejected from their communities, the boys treked thousands of kilometres, through three countries, to the refuge of the Kakuma camp. It is estimated a third died from starvation, dehydration and at the hands of enemy soldiers or wild animals during the trek.
In November 2013, Sydney-based Peken travelled to Kakuma in search of the lost boys after hearing about their plight while talking to members of the South Sudanese refugee community in western Sydney.
There he met with more than 40 of the now adult lost boys, and along with Ethiopian refugee journalist Qaabata Boru,recorded their stories and shot their portraits.
``Sitting down and talking to these men was one of the hardest things I've done. Over 50% of Kakuma Refugee camp's population are children and I saw many of those, but looking at the face of a 30-year-old-man and seeing the face of the nine-year-old boy that arrived, the five-year-old boy that fled his village in terror. Hearing of the amazing story of survival to even get to Kakuma,'' says Peken.
Today about 200 of the original lost boys, now aged in their twenties and thirties and some with their own families, remain in the Kenyan camp, which is designed to hold 100,000 refugees but is currently home to 150,000 people.
Since South Sudanese independence in 2011, refugees have begun to return, but the 200 former child refugees remain stuck in Kenya. Peken believes their plight should not be forgotten.
"By their own accounts these lost boys have applications for repatriation that have either been lost, or they are being told to `be patient', some 21 years on," he said.
The exhibition is at the Gaffa Creative Precinct, 281 Clarence Street, Sydney. Opening hours are 11am-6pm, Monday to Friday, and 11am-5pm, Saturday, closed Sunday and public holidays.
Refugee Arzen Garn. Image by Chris Peken.
