Community is no doubt there among friends and families who have spent generations in the camps. However, for the ethnic Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmens, and other religious minorities displaced from Mosul during the Islamic State takeover of the city in 2014, there is isolation mixed with plain pleasures. In the photographs of Iason Athanasiadis, splashing children play in the puddles after a hard rain, or the now lost thrill of a kid once given a football shirt of his soccer hero Ronaldo.<\/p>\n

Again, writing by email, the photojournalist, television producer, and writer explained the focus of his work: \u201cBy virtue of speaking Arabic and Persian (two of the main languages spoken by refugees and asylum seekers) and living in Greece, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Turkey and other countries that initiate refugee flows or act as corridors, I ended up working on the issue of migration before and since 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the weeks we\u2019ve been in touch, he has been on assignments away from his desk. He witnessed the fear of Iraqi men caught in the no-man\u2019s land between ISIS and the Kurdish forces in Iraq. He followed migrants on the Greek islands and documented the migrant trail in Europe. He thinks deeply about the people, their suffering, and their small hopes which he has photographed.<\/p>\n