Salvatore Di Gregorio’s portrait series, Project Mirabella: Tales of Beauty, is a blend of photographic languages: fashion meets portraiture meets documentary—”a beauty project with a twist of social reportage,” he says.

His models are a group of young Nigerian women who, along with thousands of others, have made the perilous crossing from Africa to Europe with nothing but hope for a better life. They have found themselves, at least temporarily, in a women-only, government-run refugee camp in the small Sicilian town of Mirabella Imbaccari. Here they are in limbo, with little to do while the Italian government processes their claims for asylum.

Sicily, where Di Gregorio grew up, has long been an entry point for refugees crossing into