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21 Powerful Photo Collages of People Who Live Very Different Lives

Photo Credit: Ugur Gallen/Instagram

Art can make people see things from a new perspective. Turkish artist Uğur Gallenkuş is based in Istanbul, Turkey and is known for his photo collages.

A digital artist, Gallenkuş focuses on poverty, war zones, and refugees. He uses his art to spark conversations between their lives and those of people who are more privileged.

Here are 21 of his most powerful works.

21. Turkish-backed Syrian rebels

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Turkish-backed Syrian rebels gesture as they drive down a road in the area of Hallubi, north of Afrin, on March 8, 2018. (🇹🇷) 8 Mart 2018'de Afrin'in kuzeyindeki Hilubiye bölgesinde bir yolda arabayla ilerlerken Türkiye destekli Suriyeli isyancılar sevinç hareketleri yapıyorlar. . Photo: Nazeer al-Khatib @nazeeralk @afpphoto . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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20. Refugee in the Aegean Sea

19. Child Laborer vs. Student

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A child carries bricks to an oven near Nyamlel, South Sudan on March 22, 2018. Child labour has been on the rise in South Sudan, a country where 60 percent of the population is under 18 and Unicef says that over 70 percent of children don’t attend school. In Nyamlel, up to 30 children work in the brickmaking business and they make between 50-100 South Sudanese Pounds (1 USD = 240 SSP on the black market). A brick factory owner said that he hires children because they are cheaper and he additionally thinks he is helping families survive. The economy of South Sudan is one of the world's most underdeveloped with South Sudan having little existing infrastructure and the highest maternal mortality and female illiteracy rates in the world as of 2011. South Sudan exports timber to the international market. The region also contains many natural resources such as petroleum, iron ore, copper, chromium ore, zinc, tungsten, mica, silver, gold, diamonds, hardwoods, limestone and hydropower. The oilfields in the south have been significant to the economy since the latter part of the 20th century. South Sudan has the third-largest oil reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country's economy, as in many other developing countries, is heavily dependent on agriculture. . Photo: Stefanie Glinski @stephglinski @afpphoto . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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18. Asleep vs. Resting Migrant

17. Rio vs. Military Aircraft

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16. Student vs. Arrestee

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The most important characteristic of Homo Sapiens is that can think. Sometimes having different thoughts (or even thinking) can be dangerous and deadly, depending on the time, geography and the government you are in. For those who have never known you, you are a target to be destroyed. Societies that have peaceful thoughts on art, philosophy or problems are always win. Those who put pressure on those with different opinions are always doomed to lose. To think is good. If you don't think, you're not a homo sapiens. Photo’s Story; A young palestinian boy wearing a hang mans noose in a symbolic protest against the Bank of Palestine. Without explanation the bank recently stopped accepting money transfers sent from abroad to charitable and Islamic associations in Gaza. June 11, 2015, Gaza City, Gaza. The devastation across Gaza can still be seen nearly one year on from the 2014 conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants. United Nations official figures said that the 50 day war left at least 2,189 Palestinians killed, including more than 1,486 civilians, and 11,000 injured. 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians were killed. Money pledged by the international community six months ago to rebuild Gaza has not materialised leaving many Palestinians impoverished and still suffering. . Photo: Christopher Furlong @christopherfurlong @gettyimages . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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15. Together vs. Separate

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A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents before being sent to a processing center for possible separation. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is executing the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy towards undocumented immigrants. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also said that domestic and gang violence in immigrants' country of origin would no longer qualify them for political asylum status. Honduras is one of the poorest and most violent countries in Central America. The country experienced a coup d'état in 2009 and is one of the most unequal countries in the world, while the poverty rate stood at 64.3% in 2018. Drought and crop failure in the Central American dry corridor and Climate change in Honduras has been a factor in the formation of the caravans. Many communities have become refugees or immigrants for political, religious and economic reasons in throughout human history. And it will continue to be. It is a fact that there will be and will rises mass migrations in the future due to problems caused by war and global warming. According of the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency), we are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record. An unprecedented 70.8 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 25.9 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. There are also millions of stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement. In a world where nearly 1 person is forcibly displaced every two seconds as a result of conflict or persecution with we're live. . Photos: John Moore @jbmoorephoto @gettyimages . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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14. Carnival vs. War Zone

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Smoke billows following a reported air strike by Syrian government forces in the rebel-held parts of the Jobar district, on the eastern outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus, on August 9, 2017. . Photo: Ammar Sulaiman @ammar.sulaiman.91 . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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13. Bullet vs. Flower

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12. Santa vs. Protests

11. Football Players vs. Criminals

10. Grief vs. Relaxation

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A man reacts as he looks at the body of his daughter, who was killed following reported air raids by Syrian government forces on August 24, 2015, at a make shift hospital in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of the capital Damascus. Winners in war are few, but those who lost in war are too many. . Photo: Abd Doumany @abd_doumany @afpphoto . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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9. Love Wall vs. War Wall

8. Hell on Earth vs. Paradise on Earth

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Smoke billows following a air strike on Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, late on February 23, 2018. (TR) 23 Şubat 2018 tarihinin geç saatlerinde Başkent Şam'ın eteklerindeki Doğu Guta bölgesinde gerçekleşen hava saldırısı sonrasında duman bulutu yükseliyor. . Photo: Ammar Suleiman @ammar.sulaiman.91 @afpphoto . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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7. Child at School vs. Child Soldier (?)

6. Ice Cream vs. Bomb Cloud

5. Excess vs. Crowd

4. Fine Art vs. Comrades

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A Serbian paramilitary couple celebrate the fall of the Croatian city of Vukovar. Fall from 1991. . The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of Vukovar in eastern Croatia by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various paramilitary forces from Serbia, between August and November 1991. Vukovar was defended by around 1,800 lightly armed soldiers of the Croatian National Guard (ZNG) and civilian volunteers, against as many as 36,000 JNA soldiers and Serb paramilitaries equipped with heavy armour and artillery. During the battle, shells and rockets were fired into the town at a rate of up to 12,000 a day. At the time, it was the fiercest and most protracted battle seen in Europe since 1945, and Vukovar was the first major European town to be entirely destroyed since the Second World War. When Vukovar fell on 18 November 1991, several hundred soldiers and civilians were massacred by Serb forces and at least 20,000 inhabitants were expelled. Most of Vukovar was ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population and became part of the self-declared Republic of Serbian Krajina. Several Serb military and political officials, including Milošević, were later indicted and in some cases jailed for war crimes committed during and after the battle. The battle exhausted the JNA and proved a turning point in the Croatian war. A ceasefire was declared a few weeks later. Vukovar remained in Serb hands until 1998, when it was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia with the signing of the Erdut Agreement. It has since been rebuilt but has less than half of its pre-war population and many buildings are still scarred by the battle. Its two principal ethnic communities remain deeply divided and it has not regained its former prosperity. (Source: Wikipedia) . Photo: Ron Haviv @ronhaviv_vii Art Paint: Gustav Klimt – The Kiss (in German Der Kuss) . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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3. Wasteland vs. Forest

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Men walking on a pipe over a stream near a tannery, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Almost all of Bangladesh's 200 plus tanneries are concentrated in Hazaribagh, a densely populated, odious neighbourhood on the banks of the Buriganga River. Residents of Hazaribagh's slums complain of illnesses such as fevers, skin diseases, respiratory problems and diarrhoea. They blame the tanneries for polluting the air, water, and soil and therefore causing their afflictions.The lives of the tannery industry's estimated 20,000 workers are harsh with many dying before they turn 50. Everyday these factories discharge thousands of litres of foul-smelling liquid waste into the river. However, with almost one billion USD a year in export sales, the leather industry is one of Bangladesh's most profitable sectors and there has been limited progress in cleaning it up. For 60 years of operations an unrecorded amount of chromium sulphate, lead, organohalogens, lime, hydrogen sulphide, sulphuric acid, formic acid, bleach, dyes and oils have been discharged into the river. We have known for a long time that the climate crisis is threatening our lives badly in every possible way and that it needs to be treated like the emergency it is. Now we need world leaders who believe in science and who should fight to protect our planet for future generations from the dangers of this climate crisis. Educating ourselves on this climate crisis is one of the most important steps in taking action. It’s not yet too late to educate ourselves on the facts of this global climate crisis. Let’s each do our own part from now on, to protect our planet from further destruction. . Photo: GMB Akash @gmbakash . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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2. History vs. Regular Day

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Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams was on the streets of Saigon on February 1, 1968, two days after the forces of the People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong set off the Tet offensive and swarmed into dozens of South Vietnamese cities. As Adams photographed the turmoil, he came upon Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, standing alongside ­Nguyen Van Lem, the captain of a terrorist squad who had just killed the family of one of Loan’s friends. Adams thought he was watching the interrogation of a bound prisoner. But as he looked through his viewfinder, Loan calmly raised his .38-caliber pistol and summarily fired a bullet through Lem’s head. After shooting the suspect, the general justified the suddenness of his actions by saying, “If you hesitate, if you didn’t do your duty, the men won’t follow you.” The Tet offensive raged into March. Yet while U.S. forces beat back the communists, press reports of the anarchy convinced Americans that the war was unwinnable. The freezing of the moment of Lem’s death symbolized for many the brutality over there, and the picture’s widespread publication helped galvanize growing sentiment in America about the futility of the fight. “Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world.” – Eddie Adams . Photo: Eddie Adams @apnews . #ParalelEvrenSavaşBarış 📷

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1. Girl With a White Headband

These photographs are quite jarring and thought-provoking. You can view more of the artist’s works here.

In the meantime, how did these collages make you feel? Stir something inside you haven’t felt in a while?

Please share your thoughts in the comments!