displaced

 


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It’s easy for you. Later tonight, you’ll get in your car and drive home. To your children. To your family. I don’t have a home. This place, I don’t call this a home. I don’t want to be here.

 

    K., 14 years old, talks to her counselor. She is living in a residential group in a centre for integratred youth care in Flanders, Belgium. Children are placed here by the juvenile court when their parents are unable to provide a secure environment. For some, it will be a short stay, others will spend their entire childhood in youth facilities. For two years, I am allowed to photograph, provided that nobody is recognizable.

 

    It’s in the silent moments that I find the child that has been cut from its roots, holding on with soundless strength, balancing on the edge of alienation and isolation. Close to the vulnerable human beings we all are.

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