GIOVANNI LO CURTO

If you walk behind the train station in Thessaloniki in the evening, an unseen city is revealed. A group of invisible people, refugees who are homeless without access to water, food and restrooms. People who have come from the "wrong" countries and for whom neither the EU nor the Greek state provide any kind of social services.

They live in abandoned buildings, in front of store entrances, in parks and squares. Every evening they gather in an alleyway to receive food from solidarity groups in order to survive. In their everyday lives everything is temporary, the place, the documents, the friends. The goal for some is to find ways to leave the Balkans for Europe, and for others to build a new life in Thessaloniki.

Day by day, over the last few months, a daily routine has emerged. Bonds have been created within the tent communities. The tents have been pitched on melting snow and wooden pallets and small fires lit for warmth. At the same time, in the Oikopolis social space, people from many countries demonstrate solidarity and connect with other refugees, many of whom were homeless until recently, to organize and help the homeless from Greece, Morocco, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

First 15 photographs are a small photo story, which can be  enlarged with the other photos or with the ones in my archive.