UCSC alumna Bridgette Auger’s ongoing work with Syrian refugees is featured as “The Toll of Syria’s War” on the CBS News web site.
The display is drawn from Auger’s photography-based project incorporating text and video: This Is Not Me: Enduring Syria’s War—currently on exhibition at the Gulf and Western Gallery at New York University through August 2013.
Auger’s project documents the lives of two Syrian men now living outside their home country.
It looks beyond the physical destruction caused by the war to focus on the emotional and mental toll of those displaced by the violence.
Auger received her Master’s degree in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz in 2011 and is now an independent media artist living in Beirut, Lebanon.
She works as a still photographer and videographer, covering breaking news, and also does camera work for documentary films.
Auger’s work has been published by CNN, Syria Today, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Christian Science Monitor, GlobalPost, the International Organization for Migration, and the UN Refugee Agency.
Her work has taken her to a variety of countries, including Egypt, Oman, Libya, Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, Kashmir, Mongolia, China, as well as the U.S.
In 2011, Auger was following women activists in Egypt’s Tahrir Square when they came under fire during a clash between protesters and police.
Auger’s video of that incident was featured on the Daily Beast and posted on the Center for Investigative Reporting’s GlobalPost site.
B. Ruby Rich, co-director of the Social Documentation program in UCSC’s Film and Digital Media Department, noted that “many remember Auger’s amazing photographs and short film in our grad exhibition of 2011 on Syrian refugees living in San Diego.”
Prior to her UCSC graduate work, Auger earned a degree in photography and imaging from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
To see selected images from her Syria project accompanied by text from Auger's interviews, go to CBS News.
