A group of Yemeni women stand on the balcony of their hotel in Athens, waiting with hope for their asylum assignments to be approved.
The owner of a family-run hotel in Lesvos, Greece rushes to the aid of refugees as they disembark from a boat on the nearby beach.
A pregnant mother from Iraq arrives alone in Germany with her two children.
These are just a few of the powerful vignettes of refugees Katie Salisbury uncovered while working on a multimedia documentary, “She is Syria.”
Salisbury, a writer and photographer, spent weeks traveling through Germany and Greece to study women and girl refugees in “an attempt to give them their due as mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and the glue holding it all together,” she wrote in an essay, “How These Refugee Women Taught Me the True Meaning of Motherhood.”
Her reporting humanizes a growing refugee crisis across Europe, and gives voice to the stories of Afghan, Kurdish, Iraqi, Palestinian, Iranian and Syrian women.
“These women’s courage and sense of purpose took my breath away,” Salisbury wrote. “There was no question that they would go to the ends of the earth in order to keep their families safe. As mothers, they were absolutely fierce.”
Here are the faces of compassion and resiliency Salisbury documented during her travels. The following captions are taken directly from Salisbury’s essay.
