One million Syrian refugees. An inexorable flow of people that keeps growing. Five hundred-thousand Palestinian refugees, unwelcome guests, forgotten in their ghettoes for 65 years.
A small country with less than four and a half million inhabitants.
These are the ingredients of a phenomenon like no others that makes Lebanon a place unlike any other in the World.
A state that hosts a non-state within its heart.
A land of invisibles, with no homes, no rights, floating in a limbo.
The Lebanese state does not recognize the refugee status and equates these people running from war to illegal immigrants.
Following the trail of a human being stuck in this limbo is not easy.
Lost within small informal camps, in plastic tents spread across the dried up hills along the border. Crowded into abandoned buildings, in the agglomerations that sprout all around the cities. Swallowed up by the Palestinian ghetto-camps.
We are witnessing an exodus with a devastating impact force causing a huge amount of problems: hygienic, sanitary, living, alimentary, social and educational issues.
“Lebanon has reached the limit of its endurance: we urgently need help from the international community.” This was the appeal by Lebanese president Michel Suleiman at the United Nations Security Council.
Even if we don’t want to see it. this state-not-state is growing under our very eyes. Another black hole birthed by the war.
Andrea Frazzetta was born in Lecce (Italy) in 1977. Few years later he moved to Milan where he studied art and architecture. After graduating he devoted himself entirely to photography, which he used mainly as instrument for discovery and tale-telling. So he started travelling and worked on several photo reports in South America, Africa and in the Mediterranean area.
He usually works for important magazines such as New York Times Magazine, The Times, El Pais Semanal, The Guardian Weekend, The International Herald Tribune, Le Courier International, Courier Japon, D of La Repubblica, L’Espresso, National Geographic Italy.
In 2007 he won the Canon Prize Italian Young Photographer. In 2009 he received the Yann Geffroy Award for his work "Obama Village".
In 2012 he won the PDN photo annual with his work on the African Cinema commissioned by New York Times Magazine. In 2013 is among the winner of the American Photography and the PDN photoannual award.
