Photography and text by Craig Hull
This project documents lives lived on the fringes—of society, of cities, of memory.
In Belgrade, I photographed the Roma community living in a makeshift settlement built from scrap wood, plastic sheets, and the discarded remains of a city that has never fully embraced them. Locals call it “Cardboard City.” It rises from the ground on a site heavy with history—land where Roma people were once executed during the Second World War. Now, generations later, families survive here in the shadow of that memory, their homes stitched together from trash, their lives invisible to most of the capital’s residents.
Further south, in Kosovo, I met Serbian families who fled urban centres after the war, pushed from their homes as political tensions reshaped the landscape. Once they were neighbours. Now they are outcasts. Many have ended up in rural isolation, stripped of livelihoods, their children hungry, their futures uncertain. I met families surviving solely through begging, grappling with grief after losing children to starvation—a reality that feels unimaginable in 21st-century Europe, but one they endure in silence.
These photographs are not meant to provoke pity. They are a record. A testament to resilience in the face of systemic neglect, displacement, and historical trauma. The camera offers no solutions, but it can create space—for reflection, for empathy, and perhaps for action.
There are stories here that no longer make headlines. But they are still unfolding, every day, in places the world prefers not to look.
