SIGNAL by John Stanmeyer

SIGNAL by John Stanmeyer

“Signal”, by John Stanmeyer, is an image that shows African migrants on the coast of Djibouti City with cellphones raised, trying to catch the faintest signal to reach their relatives abroad in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. This image touches one of the more sentimental, and often unnoticed, issues that come with migration. It easily conveys the nostalgia felt by the people in the image because of its dream-like quality.

            In the image, the group of people standing by the waters edge is silhouetted against the deep blue night sky, which often gives a romantic feel to an image. The brightness of the moon and the phones held up to the sky almost makes it feel like the moon is their connection to their love ones. Also the repetition of the arms holding phones shows the urgency of the need to connect.

            This is very impacting for me because for my Geography senior seminar class, I’m doing research on Somali refugees in Kenya being repatriated. I think this image is incredibly powerful; it is part of the series “Out of Eden” which is a growing set of photographs from Stanmeyer’s 21,000 mile walk from Africa to South America, but it doesn't need the rest of the series to successfully tell this story. The feelings he is trying to get across about the pictured migrant people are so clear that only the one image is needed.

Ebube Ezeh