Séverine Sajous and Julie Brun of the Jungleye photography project handed out cameras to women in Lebanon to document their families, surroundings and lives at a refugee camp

Nuzha, a Syrian refugee, lives with her four young children in the Burj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut, Lebanon. She is one of a number of women taking part in a photography project called Behind Closed Doors, run by French photographer Séverine Sajous. Last year, Sajous did a similar project with refugees in camps around Calais where participants were given cameras to document their own lives. This time, women take the cameras into their homes, photograph their children and surroundings, and write about their lives on the back – like postcards. “The aim of the project is to give them a voice back, to sensitise the international community to the migration issue,” says Sajous. “They understood that this project was also a way to have more self esteem, gaining in autonomy and becoming real photographers.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nuzha with her children. Photograph: Nuzha/Jungleye

“It is a serious and meaningful game,” Nuzha writes of the project. “Even if it is for a short time, we decided to laugh at our misfortune.” But only one of her photographs, which shows her son Mohammed making a funny face, holding his nose against the stench of the rubbish, is amusing. The others – her daughter, nearly as tall as the ceiling of their shack, her baby playing with electrical wires – are touching, seen through the eyes of their mother, but also horrifying at how they are having to live. “Please consider this story as it is what thousands of families are enduring,” she writes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The room where Aicha lives with her family. Photograph: Aicha/Jungleye

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Aicha photographs the small room where her family of four eat, sleep and wash. Haifa, a talented photographer, manages to capture some of the childhood joy of her children, even though she also captures the cramped conditions and dangerous environment: “I feel like the concrete from the buildings around me will fall on my head at any time”.

Khawla writes, simply: “I want to show our daily life in this human-scale garbage dump.”

Nuzha: “We will tell you about the compartmentalisation, the insalubrity and the dangerousness of our lives.”

Seba: “Everything’s falling apart”

Safaa: “My name is Bétoul. I am Syrian. I was born with a cyst in my left eye. In Syria, I used to receive healthcare for free but here it is impossible.”



Ragheda: Even if they told us our work as photographers could reveal our situation to the world, I find it hard to believe that someone could understand.”

Haifa: “This balance, I can also recover it thanks to my family. In spite of these terrible living conditions we are stuck in, my children are filled with happiness.”

Nuzha: “My two elders directly joined the game. We created a staging for each pictures to be as clownish as disheartening. Mohammed will pinch his nose to denounce bad smells from the garbage surrounding our building.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wazira’s husband remains in Syria. Photograph: Wazira/Jungleye

Wazira: “I feel so lonely here in Beirut. I miss my husband. He is in Syria. He is disabled, so he could not escape with us.”