Lingering Ghosts

Lingering Ghosts collects Sam Ivin's portraits of 28 people from 28 countries then waiting on asylum decisions in the UK, their eyes scratched out of every print.

Ivin began the project in 2013 at a drop-in centre in Cardiff while still a documentary photography student, later extending it across England; his sitters, from Albania, Eritrea, Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere, had by then been waiting between five months and 21 years for their applications to be resolved. Ivin scratched the c-type prints by hand with sandpaper and a knife, erasing the eyes to stand for the state of limbo asylum seekers are held in, neither seen nor able to move forward. The book reproduces the full series and opens with the text of Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees the right to seek asylum; it was published by Fabrica in a first edition of 500 copies.

Ivin is a UK documentary photographer whose work focuses on social issues and the people living inside them; Lingering Ghosts, developed after he was selected in a Magnum/Ideas Tap competition for young photographers, remains his best-known project and has been exhibited and published internationally since its release.