The middle-aged man in the photograph sits alone in a café, a look of exhaustion and bewilderment on his face. He is experiencing a form of hell – being the parent of an adult child recruited by Sharia4Belgium, an ISIS-affiliated group – that is unimaginable to most of us. Yet the photographer, Columbia Journalism School graduate Ben Taub, brings us as close as possible.

A small selection of Taub’s photos, both of Belgian parents of ISIS recruits and, in a few instances, of the recruits themselves, are on display on the second floor of Thompson Hall outside the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR). Taub previously published some of the images in a story he wrote for The New Yorker magazine about European jihadis who have gone to Syria since war broke out there in 2011.

The exhibition is the first in an ongoing joint ICCCR-Columbia Journalism School series, titled “War and Peace,” that will be displayed outside the ICCCR space.

“We wanted a display that connects emotionally to the Center and to the intellectual work that we do,” says Drew Pham, ICCCR Project Coordinator.

Pham, who served as a refugee resettlement caseworker prior to coming to TC, is working with Nina Berman, a photojournalist who is an Associate Professor at the Journalism School, on the series, which will next feature images from the civil conflict in Ukraine.

– Joe Levine

Published Friday, Jun 17, 2016