You Can See Me, But I Don’t Exist

I developed You Can See Me, But I Don’t Exist in close collaboration with curator Jenny Christensson, whose curatorial insight shaped the project’s direction and the way the work meets its audiences.

The project began after I spent time photographing refugees in France, Belgium, Austria, and Sweden in 2018. Again, and again people described how the asylum‑seeking process slowly eroded their sense of self. Many spoke about feeling invisible unseen by immigration systems and overlooked by the societies they were trying to join.

One young Afghan man in Sweden said something that stayed with me: “You can see me, but I don’t exist.” He was in his final year of school, waiting for a decision on his third and final appeal to remain in the country. His words captured the suspended, isolating reality of living for years in a bureaucratic no man’s land. His sentence became the title of this UK‑based project, which explores how the asylum process dehumanises people seeking refuge.

In the UK, many refugees and asylum seekers face long periods of uncertainty while waiting for decisions. Unable to work, they often experience poverty, poor physical and mental health, and sometimes danger. When an application is rejected, people must confront not only the years lost but also the fear of being forced back to the country they risked everything to leave. Those who remain after rejection live in insecurity, relying entirely on family, friends, or charities.

This situation is worsening. Under recent legislation, anyone arriving in the UK through routes not approved by the government can no longer apply for asylum. Instead, they face deportation back to their country of origin.

To photograph people without exposing their identities, I worked with a camera obscura and long exposures. The portraits blur the individual while keeping the background sharp. This protects people who fear being identified, but it also acts as a visual metaphor for how the asylum process erases and distorts a person’s sense of self.

I wanted the project to include the voices of the people I photographed. I invited them and others who wished to take part to write creative responses to their blurred portraits. Their writing developed through workshops led by poets Laila Sumpton (London), Malka al Haddad (Birmingham), and Ambrose Musiyiwa (Manchester). Together and individually, participants explored the themes held within the images.