Magnum Photos could not have chosen a more telling name for its new exhibition at the Visa Pour L’Image, Perpignan, France. In collaboration with Canon, “Exile” will show works by 22 Magnum photographers across 70 years of documenting stories of international migration and displacement. Since the title, especially in modern times, has transcended chronological and geographical boundaries, the aim of the exhibition is to bring to attention the vast number of international conflicts since World War II.

Photography’s most respected agency, Magnum Photos is coming out of its old shell without losing focus on what it has been largely known for — human-interest stories. The sheer scale of the issues at the core of the exhibition’s theme is represented in all works, especially one particular image by Chris Steele-Perkins, who depicts refugees waiting for food in several rows, which almost feel like the end of the horizon in the photograph. There’s also Robert Capa’s iconic image of an immigrant woman with a suitcase on her shoulder arriving in Israel as her little son holds on to the edge of her dress. Being on the field has been Philip Jones Griffiths’ repertoire and his photograph of a refugee carrying her stack of belongings in Saigon after the US bombing is utterly moving. In all the photographs, there’s a sense of what cannot be undone, even in the struggle for a reformatory aftermath that accompanies most refugee crises. It is always the burden of war that outweighs most other outcomes in situations that severely compromise human rights on multiple counts.

The more recent works on display are composed with a definite element of arresting drama. These are interesting to study, especially when being shown together with old masters’ works and their interpretation of the events at hand. Both Moises Saman and Thomas Dworzak in their photographs of refugees on the Turkey-Syria border and the Sleptzovsk refugee camp in Chechnya respectively, rely on the irrationality of conflict to depict a blurry picture of the hopelessness that surrounds victims who’re left stranded because of political ambitions. The photographers’ focus is more on the idea of the unnecessary situation rather than its visual realism. Alongside the exhibition, Magnum Photos and Canon are also holding “First Impressions,” a free five-day portfolio review session at the Visa Pour L’Image festival and this sounds like the perfect residual outcome of an exhibition, whose theme is unfortunately the modern world’s uneasy truth.