Posts tagged photography
“Our Children, Where To?”, Iraqi artist Riad Nehmeh reminisces about his childhood, depicting memories both bitter and sweet
In the end people, and especially children, are the focal point of all my work, which revolves around humans and memory. I present panoramic artwork that is interconnected, with a child emerging in gradual shading from a foggy image. My intention is [to show] that children are thrust into an adult world and the wall creates a memory of the place where the child enters to inhabit this memory.
I was not afraid for a moment because I believe what I am doing is necessary, especially in view of the media blackout about many aspects of the revolution. From the outset I figured there are people dying in their homes, and if I were to die in the street or on the front lines, so be it. I faced death when I was hit with shrapnel from a regime artillery shell fired on Sheikh Saeed district in Aleppo on February 7th, 2013. It broke my leg but I am recovered now.
I survived many moments that were fraught with danger while I took photographs on the front lines, and during air strikes, mortar attacks and tank shelling.
When the Syrian conflict broke out in March 2011, Nour Kelzi, a schoolteacher from Aleppo, had no idea how the war would change her life.
Kelzi, who was 23 when the conflict began, started taking amateur photographs on the front lines with her mobile phone. This eventually led to a job with the international news agency Reuters, and her current status as a well-known chronicler of the Syrian revolution.
Kelzi began her work for Reuters under the pseudonym Zain Karam to protect her family, later reverting to her real name.She spoke to Al-Shorfa about her experience as a war photographer.
[Top: Bab Trablous, Hama. “A bag of bread cost around 25 cents two years ago, but the price in Hama is now $1,” reports a photographer from Lens of a Young Hamawi. “Nowadays, every family member - men, women, and children - take their turn fetching bread.”]
[Bottom Left: Yassin and Maryam Sabbagh, a brother and sister playing in the street in a regime-controlled neighborhood of Homs, January 2013. A half hour after the photo was posted on the Lens of a Young Homsi page they were killed by mortar fire.]
[Bottom Right: One of five similar graveyards in Qasayr in which roughly 1000 of those killed in the last two years, both fighters and civilians, have been buried. Local volunteers from the town decorate and maintain the graveyards.]
The Lens of a Youth Photography Collective: Documenting Life and War in Syria
As much as the war in Syria is one of weapons, it is also a war of images. Photographs and videos circulated online have altered assumptions, confirmed biases, and framed narratives at every stage of ongoing developments. In the past year, a number of Facebook pages have emerged as part of the “Lens of a Youth” network of photography collectives, covering nearly all the different cities and towns in Syria. Each individual collective’s moniker declares the place it is from, such as “Lens of a Young Aleppan” or “Lens of a Young Hamawi.”
Not surprisingly, the idea of systematically documenting all the cities through a coordinated photography collective came from “the capital of the Syrian revolution”: Homs—but it quickly spread across all of Syria. Nebras, who works on the “Lens of a Young Deiri” page, says the Syrian uprising contains many elements, but that in his “personal opinion, media is the soul of the revolution. The effort to document every event, no matter how large or how small, is what keeps it alive.”
The collectives have become a popular source of images of everyday life, violence, and destruction in neighborhoods from around the country. While most of the photographs and videos coming out of Syria seem to exclusively feature either images of war or images of peace, the “Lens of a Youth” pages have a variety of pictures from daily life in Syria. The pages exhibit photographs of destruction and protests, but also of street corners, houses, and city landscapes.
Rawiya is a photography collective founded by female photographers from across the Middle East. Rawiya presents an insider’s view of a region in flux balancing its contradictions while reflecting on social and political issues and stereotypes.
As a collective, Rawiya’s photographers respect the human dignity of the stories they tell, pooling resources and vision to produce in-depth photo-essays and long-term projects. Rawiya, meaning ‘she who tells a story’, brings together the experiences and photographic styles of Myriam Abdelaziz, Tamara Abdul Hadi, Laura Boushnak, Tanya Habjouqa, Dalia Khamissy and Newsha Tavakolian.
Their work is currently being exhibited at the New Art Exchange until 20 April 2013.
INSIDE OUT project in Baghdad, IRAQ by JR
Inside Out - Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, to show joy and laughter of the people
“I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world…INSIDE OUT.” – JR
INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work.
Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities. People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually.
Refraction: Moving Images on Palestine
Curator: Shaheen Merali
Venue: P21 Gallery, 21 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD
Artists: Mohammad Al-Hawajri, Kamal Aljafari, Tayseer Barakat, Mike Hoolboom, Khaled Hourani, Khaled Jarrar, Josh Jones, kennardphillipps, Inzajeano Latif, Manal Mahamid, Laila Shawa, Nasser Soumi, Tarzan and Arab
Exhibition dates: 19th December 2012 - 16th March 2013
Never mistaking a wish for a certainty, the artists and the artworks speak of histories that go beyond the habitats and agonies of battlefields and battling grounds, to speak of human folly in small and individual acts of catastrophic instincts. Here, works have the power to shock, surprise, silence and outrage with high-tension energies, which form, from these difficult histories, a series of proportionate inner values that the world will recognise as life beyond excuses for inaction. These energies help us rise to sustain some sense of urgency as to what we care about, and bring forth our unique abilities wherever opposition falls within our daily goals.
The French-Swiss artist, Jean Tinguely (1924-1991), once stated “Art is the distortion of an unendurable reality… Art is correction, modification of a situation; art is communication, connection… Art is social, self-sufficient and total.”
(Image: Weapons of Choice by Josh Jones)
Photographs of the Arab Spring features images by late photojournalist Remi Ochlik: January 26 - February 22 2013
The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University and the Consulate General of France in Boston present a stirring exhibit by French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, who was killed in the February 2012 bombardment of Homs during the Syrian uprising along with American war journalist Marie Colvin.
(Photo Collage: Taken from website of Remi Ochlik)
HALIM AL KARIM: WITNESS FROM BAGHDAD 2013
Organisation: ARTSPACE London
Time: 16 January 2013 10:00am - 23 February 2013 6:00pm
Place: ARTSPACE London, 7 Milner Street London SW3 2QA
Halim Al Karim’s approach to his photography relies heavily on his attempt to understand his past; trying to comprehend what happened to him and his country. His own personal view of people and of the world depicted in his work can be symbolically enlarged to incorporate general and international interpretations.
(Image: Hidden Witnesses by Halim Al-Karim)
SUPREME KA’ABA OF GOD, 2012 by Shadia Alem
Born in Mecca, the visual artist, who is also a photographer, lives and works between Paris and Jeddah. She has a degree in art and English literature from King AbdulAziz University. Shadia Alem is involved in several projects to encourage the creativity of youth and women in Saudi Arabia. Her works reflect the change of the holy city surrounded today by building towers and buildings still high and caught in a conflict between spirituality and modernity.
This is one of the pieces being sold at auction on January 21, 2013 at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris to raise funds for Syria.
A harrowing photograph of a mother whose child was killed by the IDF during their incursion into Jenin 2002
The photo was taken by Paolo Pellegrin, an internationally renowned photojournalist.
Issa Touma, from the series ‘Sufis: The day of al-Ziyara’
His series on the day of al-Ziyara documents an annual procession of Sufi pilgrims in northern Syria. Sufism is a mystical path within Islam. Touma photographed the event over the course of ten years, gradually gaining the trust of his subjects. The resulting images convey his sense of immersion in the festival and capture the fervour of the worshippers.
Abdulnasser Gharem, ‘The Path (Siraat)’
The subject of this photograph is a bridge in southern Saudi Arabia that was severely damaged in the early 1980s when villagers attempted to take shelter on it during a flash flood. Instead of providing a safe high ground above the floodwaters the bridge collapsed, resulting in the loss of many lives. Gharem spray-painted the word siraat repeatedly on the bridge. The word means path, and in the Qur’an it refers to ‘the path to God’.
Light from the Middle East: New Photography presents work by artists from across the Middle East (spanning North Africa to Central Asia), living in the region and in diaspora.
Photography is a powerful and persuasive means of expression. Its immediacy and accessibility make it an ideal choice for artists confronting the social challenges and political upheavals of the Middle East today.
Samuel Aranda for The New York Times Wins the Top World Press Photo prize 2011
Samuel Aranda’s photograph of a woman holding a wounded relative in her arms was a poignant image of the Arab Awakening. The photograph was taken in Yemen, inside a mosque, which was being used as a field hospital by demonstrators. Aidan Sullivan who was the chair of the judging panel said:
We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East.
(Photo Credit: Samuel Aranda)
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