ZALMAÏPHOTOGRAPHY
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ZALMAÏ Reporters Without Borders Favre2009Zalmaï has been travelling around the world for the last 20 years. From Africa to Asia, from Cuba to the USA. In the field he takes his time, engages people he wants to photograph in conversation, waiting for the instant when a look, a silhouette or a gesture suddenly ring true. Goind beyond the seductiveness of his photos, he keeps asking himself: which ones are true and which ones are false? Always trying to get people closer to each other, since they are seperated by so many clichés. Quite naturally, it is Afghanistan, his home country, which attracts him again and again. But Zalmaï wants to transcend the images of violence so as to "open people's eyes to a reality which is much richer than war and to place the beauty of mankind in the middle of all this misery."Languages : English, French, German, ItalianISBN-10: 2828910547ISBN-13: 978-2828910549
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SILENT EXODUS: Portraits of Iraqi Refugees in ExileAperture 2008In "Silent Exodus," Kabul-born, Switzerland-based photographer Zalmaï chronicles the plight of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon; over the course of several trips he did in 2007 with the support of Human Rights Watch, he interviewed them, collected their individual stories and photographed them in their homes, where many remain in uncertainty. Although frequently harassed by neighbors, they are still afraid to return to Iraq, given the instability and violence that lingers there. Rarely told and under-reported, this is a human story which deserves a wider audience. Khaled Hosseini, author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" contributes an introduction to the work.The New York Review of Books wrote:"Zalmaï, whose recent, aptly titled collection, Silent Exodus, depicts Iraqi exiles who are stuck in the Middle East, offers powerful insight into these peoples uprooted lives and their often remarkable efforts to cope with a situation that has no obvious end. Pairing a series of portraits of families and individuals with brief first-person accounts of the events that caused each to leave, Zalmaïs book, though slender, gets close to a number of the social and psychological effects of exile and the traumas that lead to it. The basis of society in Iraq has been destroyed: there are no more teachers and judges, a former schoolteacher tells Zalmaï. Taking the picture from above, Zalmaï shows the mans reduced existence: he is sitting in a small, barren room in Damascus, his well-tailored shirta habit of an earlier life clashing with the ratty towel behind him apparently standing in for a curtain and his head-in-hands despair. "Hugh EakinISBN: 1597110779EAN: 9781597110778No. of Pages: 96
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RETURN, AFGHANISTANAperture2004For more than a quarter of a century, Afghanistan has been ravaged by war, drought, and famine. In this magnificent volume, Afghan-born photographer Zalmaï returns home after twenty-three years in exile to rediscover his homeland at a crucial moment of transition. Working in rich color, and frequently using a panoramic format that embraces the vastness of the sky and sand, Zalmaï immerses us in the ravaged landscape and the bustle of reconstruction. My project tries to capture the resilience of a people who have rarely known peace, their optimism in the face of overwhelming odds and the very real worry that the country remains on a knife-edge and could easily slip back into a nightmare from which it is still trying to escape.Hardback11.75" x 8"128 pages 80 four-colo and 5 duotone
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ECLIPSEUmbrage 2002Zalmaï's photographs capture the slow, distressing drift of exile and dispossession: spectral figures against a stormy sky, a sheared row of peaks framing a figure like a sacred relic, horizons of men, both of this world and of some timeless land. This is a documentation of a journey through ambiguous territoriesfrom Cuba to India, Mali to the Philippines, Indonesia to Egypt, and a return to Zalmaïs native Afghanistana search for place when ones own land has been destroyed.The changing interplay of composition, light, and faces infuse the photographs of Zalmaï in this book, which speaks of transformation and disenfranchisement not just of place but of spirit. Most of all, his work is about the fragility of presence.These are photographs that have been shaped over centuries by ideas carried in mens soulsnot places given by the gods in their placid beauty. Instead, the interiors of these photographs are tangled and jagged, meandering and menacing, of this earth even as they reach to the sky. In the aggregate, they sketch a fragmented story of dispossession, of a voyage of the spirit, of the complex emotions of return. Paris-based Afghan novelist, Atiq Rahimi, contributes an original preface, The Memory of the Mirror. In Eclipse, these two voices offer insight into an Afghanistan lost, but not forgotten, and of the enduring legacy of exile. An exhibition of the work opened at the Musée dElysée, Lausanne in Fall 2002, before traveling internationally. Daniel Girardin, Curator of the Museé dElyseé, curated the European exhibition and contributes an essay to this volume.
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