Photography in the Spaces of Violence: Politics of Witness in Occupied Palestine and Libya
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Time: 12:00-2:00 pm
Location: Stabile Center Room, Columbia University's Journalism School, main floor
Mohammad Al-Azza is a refugee from the village of Beit Jibreen. He was born and resides in Aida Refugee Camp. He is a documentarian and photographer, and he directs the Arts & Media Unit of Lajee Center (insert hyper link http://www.lajee.org/) in Aida Refugee Camp, Palestine.
In this capacity, he helps youth to produce photography and video projects. His first documentary, Ali Wall, won the Global Jury Prize of the It Is Apartheid Film Contest (2010), and his documentary Everyday Nakba (2011) has been screened in numerous festivals and mobilized an international movement to improve access to clean water in Aida Refugee Camp and other Palestinian communities. His award-winning photography on media representation, refugee rights, and popular protest has exhibited in Palestine, France, and the United States, among other places.
Diana Matar is a photographer based in London and New York. Her projects, which often incorporate testimony, text, or sound, focus on the interplay of history, memory and landscape. Her internationally award winning projects include those on political disappearance, immigration, veiled women, and the disappearing landscape of peripheral Cairo .
She has been awarded the International Fund for Documentary Photography, the Deutsche Bank Award for Fine Art, an Individual Artist Grant by the British Arts Council and was nominated for the Prix Pictet Photography Award. Her work has been exhibited at Saatchi Gallery London, and in over 15 countries. Earlier this year her work from Libya was published in the New Yorker Magazine. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections around the world. An installation of Matar's work from Libya will be exhibited in the Tate Modern exhibition, Photographers Responding to Conflict, in 2014.
The discussion will be moderated by The New Yorker's Photo Editor, Elissa Curtis.
The event is sponsored by the Middle East Institute, Center for Palestine Studies, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists' Association and SIPA's (IMAC) International Media, Advocacy and Communications specialization.