Photography and text by Craig Hull
In the summer of 2015 into 2016, as war and collapse displaced millions across the Middle East—especially in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq—Europe was caught in the swell of one of the greatest refugee crises in recent history. For thousands, the dream was simple: to reach Germany or other Western European countries where safety, stability, and opportunity might await. But the road west was closing.
Budapest became a bottleneck.
In the heart of the Hungarian capital, at Keleti and Nyugati train stations, the air hung heavy with uncertainty. Families who had walked for weeks across multiple borders found themselves stranded—stalled at the edge of the Schengen zone as Hungary sealed its borders and refused them safe passage. Tents sprouted on concrete. Children slept on cardboard. Station platforms turned into limbo.
This project documents that pause between flight and freedom. I photographed refugees not in motion, but in stillness—in their waiting, their exhaustion, their moments of hope and confusion. Mothers nursing infants beside vending machines. Young men charging phones near luggage piles. Fathers holding signs pleading for peace.
The train stations, symbols of movement, became places of stagnation and quiet resistance. People were not only seeking passage, but also dignity. Their presence challenged a continent struggling with its identity, its borders, and its responsibilities.
These images are not about politics. They are about people—displaced, determined, and human. In the most public spaces of Budapest, they made their plight visible to the world, even when governments tried to look away.
This is their story, seen through still frames—moments caught between past and future, hope and hard ground, escape and arrival.
