Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage is a photo exhibition created by Fellipe Lopes. Fellipe is a Press member of The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and an immigrant from Brazil based in Ireland for the last 14 years. Fellipe is a Photojournalist with a focus on Human Rights, Environmental Issues, Education, and Art Projects.

Either because of unnecessary wars, civil conflicts, poverty, persecution, or climate change, people move to survive and international law should protect them. This exhibition follows a journey across the Mediterranean marked by violence, uncertainty, endurance, and hope. At sea and at the point of arrival on European shores, bodies carry the weight of distance crossed. They also carry several nights without sleep, thirst, hunger, burns from fuel and salt, fear, loss, memories of torture and violence, but hope and dreams. Arrival is often imagined as an ending. Instead, it is another long chapter. Exhaustion meets unfamiliar systems, new rules, and long periods of waiting.
The journey continues through borders, camps, reception centres — places where time stretches, and futures remain unresolved. Names, memories, and losses move quietly alongside resilience, solidarity, and the determination to continue.

The photographs in this exhibition do not document a single moment, but a sustained dramatic journey, one that reshapes lives long before departure and long after arrival. They continue to experience the impact of the policies designed to protect them, but the reality is
different.

This is not a refugee crisis. This is a policy crisis. Those policies are reflected in these photographs presented in this exhibition.