Narciso Contreras: Documenting Migrant Vulnerability from the Desert to Libya

Mexican photojournalist Narciso Contreras, based in Stockholm, has won the 2017 Carmignac Photojournalism Award for his project "Libya: A Human Marketplace," which documents human trafficking at Libya's borders. The project, exhibited at Palazzo Reale in Milan, exposes the brutal conditions faced by migrants from Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Eritrea, Syria, and Malaysia as they transit through Libya, a country destabilized by militias. Contreras, a former philosophy student of Enrique Dussel, focuses on invisible stories of resilience, such as Haitian refugees stranded at the US-Mexico border. He previously won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for his coverage of the Syrian war. The interview discusses his ethical stance—showing reality rather than explaining it—and the challenges of funding long-term projects. He plans to continue documenting migration from origin to arrival in Fortress Europe, a journey that can take over a year. The article also notes that according to the IOM, 278,372 migrants have landed in Europe since the start of the year, with 3,168 dead or missing.