Asylum seekers can spend years in limbo at Colnbrook detention centre. Nana Varveropoulou gained unique access, taking their photographs and encouraging them to record their lives during the torturous wait Nana Varveropoulou calls her photographic record of life inside Colnbrook immigration removal centre No Man’s Land. The term fits perfectly. Close to Heathrow, so that once word comes through that detainees’ appeals for leave to stay have failed they can be bundled on to planes out of the UK, it is a holding pen for the stateless. They are supposed to be at the centre for no more than three months, but some are held here for years in legal limbo.Colnbrook, which houses more than 400 detainees, is a shadowy place where the media spotlight seldom penetrates. Serco – which ran it until 2014, when Mitie took over the contract – says 80,000 have passed through since it was opened in 2004. Varveropoulou’s photographs and those taken by the inmates who signed up for the workshops she ran there are remarkable. But what is even more remarkable is that they were taken at all. Privately managed centres such as Colnbrook, run on exactly the same lines as prisons, do not encourage interlopers. Somehow, the Greek-born 38-year-old interloped. Continue reading...
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