Patrick Witty – The Unwanted

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ONE PHOTO – ONE STORY

12.08.2016

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In the famous holiday paradise, the Dominican Republic, thousands of inhabitants of Haitian descent are banished to the border with Haiti – the country’s impoverished neighbour. Here, they are left on their own: a refugee drama that has gone almost unnoticed by the rest of the world.

The island of Hispaniola was one of the first places where Christopher Columbus set foot on American soil in 1492. Today the second largest island in the West Indies is divided into two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. People who moved to the Dominican Republic to escape the misery of Haiti are constantly exposed to discrimination there. Their situation became significantly worse when around 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent had their citizenship revoked in June 2015. Many were forced to leave their homes under the threat of violence, and have now been living for close to a year in makeshift shacks by the border – on the Haitian side. Patrick Witty visited one of the camps on assignment for the New York Times.

“This is the Jean family. Mirlene Lamour with her daughter Yahira and their son Mickenson. The family of seven had lived on a farm in the Dominican Republic but now live in Parc Cadeau after Peres Yves Jean, Mirlene’s husband and the children’s father, was deported.”

Read the full article and an interview with the photographer in LFI 6/2016.

Patrick Witty

Born in Glasgow, Kentucky in 1972, Patrick Witty studied photo journalism at Western Kentucky University. Following appointments as picture editor for the New York Times, Time Magazine and Wired, Patrick Witty recently became the Deputy Director of Photography for Digital at National Geographic.

www.instagram.com/patrickwitty

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