Enri Canaj was born in Albania in 1980, where he spent his childhood, and then moved to Greece. Hence, he covers stories in Greece and the Balkans, mainly focusing on migration and the recent crisis. 

The body of a baby lays on the coast. During autumn, because of the bad weather conditions, crossing by boat the sea border between Turkey and Greece is very dangerous and many people drown in the Aegean.

He studied Photography at the Leica Academy, in Athens, and eventually, in 2007, Canaj attended a year-long workshop with Nikos Economopoulos, photographer of Magnum, in a project on migration hosted by the British Council. 

Since 2008, he has worked as a freelance photographer for outlets such as CNN Photo, New York Magazine, or Paris Match, inter alia. His projects have been exhibited both in Greece and internationally, at places such as the Bilgi Santral in Istanbul, the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki or the Benaki Museum in Athens.

Some of his most renowned works include The wind cries war, Albania A-Homecoming (winner of the JGS Contest, 2013), and Syrian refugees in Greece. As a prestigious photographer, he has been awarded The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film grant, and the FREELENS Award at the LUMIX Festival. 

His work has come to my attention thanks to the perfectly palpable emotions he tries to convey in his photographs, all of them covered by that rough black and white filter. Death, tragedy, misery, and desolation are recurrent themes in his work. He is conveying to us the way he sees the world, cruel and raw, with no compassion… at all.

© Enri Canaj, Magnum Photos