Near Doyran, Turkey, on March 2, 2020, migrants set up camps along the Turkish-Greek border by the Maritsa River. This follows Turkey's decision not to prevent refugees from heading to Europe after suffering casualties in an attack in Syria. ©Byron Smith for VII Mentor Program.
In Mantamados, Greece, on Feb. 26, 2020, villagers confront the Greek police force, known as the MAT, during protests against a proposed migrant detention camp on the island of Lesvos. Demonstrations also took place on the nearby island of Chios over its planned detention center. ©Byron Smith for VII Mentor Program.
In Alexandroupolis, Greece, on Sept. 8, 2023, Syrian refugee Qusai Alahmad, 31, is comforted by his cousin Abdulrahman Alahmad at the location where his brother Basel and 17 other migrants died in wildfires near the northern Greek village of Avantas. ©Byron Smith for VII Mentor Program.
The Akasha family sits in the dark amid a power outage in Khartoum, Sudan, on Dec. 14, 2020. ©Byron Smith for VII Mentor Program.
In Khartoum, Sudan, on Dec. 14, 2020, 3-year-old Muhaned Akasha and his family sit in darkness during a power outage. ©Byron Smith for VII Mentor Program.
A Ukrainian internally displaced person (IDP) who escaped from Irpin, a Kyiv suburb heavily affected by fighting and shelling, arrives with her dog and family at a location before the destroyed bridge leading into the city. The scene was captured in the third week of the Russian invasion on March 12, 2022. ©Byron Smith for the VII Mentor Program
Yelena Herhel is consoled over the body of her husband Arkadiy Yasinsky, in Kyiv, Monday, March 14, 2022. Yasinsky, a civilian, was killed by Russian forces at a military checkpoint in Stoyanka, a village west of Kyiv. ©Byron Smith for VII Mentor Program.
In Ukraine's southern Mykolaiv region, near the front lines, soldiers known by the call signs "Raven," left, and "Gun," wait during a morning pause in rocket firing from a Grad launch system at Russian targets. This occurred as the Ukrainian Armed Forces advanced into the Kherson region on Nov. 3, 2022. ©Byron Smith for VII Mentor Program.
Serhiy, 56, helps his elderly neighbors retrieve tools from the rubble of their home in Chernihiv to rebuild in April 2022. The city, population 285,000, was under siege for 39 days, resulting in 700 deaths, the mayor said. ©Byron Smith for the VII Mentor Program.
Location
Athens, Greece
Work
website
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Byron Smith

VII Mentor Program 2023-24

Byron Smith is an American freelance photographer currently based in Athens, Greece. Before moving to Athens in the summer of 2019, he worked as a stringer in New York City for the better part of the last decade. His work has been published in numerous publications including The New York Times, Getty Images, Le Monde, Libération, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and The Wall Street Journal. Smith’s work has recently been recognized through numerous awards and fellowships. In 2022, he was selected as a VII Academy Fellow. A selection of his work in Ukraine from 2022 was exhibited at the U.S. Capitol and Oxford University in 2023, garnering significant recognition for its depiction of the ongoing conflict. Overall, Smith’s body of work reflects his passion and commitment to the visual documentation of these times and his dedication to capturing the human experience through his lens as closely as possible.

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