Frozen Hopes

Belgrade, Serbia on January 17-20, 2017. According to UNHCR, 7,300 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are stranded in Serbia. More than 6,200 of them have found shelter in government facilities in the Serbian territory, while the rest live in harsh conditions in the streets of Belgrade. Despite the European Union and Turkey deal on the reduction of refugee flows to the Greek islands, as well as the official closure of several borders in the Balkans, the Balkan route to Central and Northern Europe remains active. Thousands of those are trapped in Bulgaria, FYROM and Serbia, affected by the tightening of EU security policies and have been forced to rest their hopes in the smuggling networks.

Konstantinos Tsakalidis was born in 1986 in Serres, Greece. He graduated from the Department of Informatics of Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki. He has attended the seminars cycle of Photographic Centre Stereosis in Thessaloniki. He is co-founder member of the Greek collective photo agency SOOC (www.sooc.gr) and contributor of Bloomberg news in Northern Greece since 2013. His photographs have been exhibited in group exhibitions, Greek and foreign websites, magazines and newspapers like: NZZ Folio, Die Zeit, De Tijd, The Guardian, La Croix, Huffington Post, Le Monde, Washington Post, The Times, Der Spiegel, NEON, Kapa Magazine, Le Figaro, Al Jazeera etc.