Iraq Through the Eyes of Local Photographers

As part of the attendant programme for the This Place exhibition, the DOX Centre will feature a lecture focusing on documentary photography. 

It will present to the Czech public and photography enthusiasts one possible version of photojournalism on the current media market. The lecture and photo projection will be given by Italian photographer and photo editor Stefano Carini, who currently lives in the city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, where since the spring of 2014 he has been running Iraq’s only photo agency, Metrography.

It will offer a valuable personal perspective on events in Iraq and the media image of current events (including the propaganda machinery of the Islamic State, the Iraqi government’s censorship, and the ill-advised behaviour of Western media, which blindly accepted and ran manipulative photos from ISIS supporters), and will reveal what is behind the stories that make it onto the media from today’s Iraq. It will also present long-term project’s by the agency’s photographers – Zmnako Ismaela, Rawsht Twana, Bandan Atta, and others – that describe life in Iraq outside of wartime as well. The lecture will also look at some aspects of sustainable management of a small creative photo agency, using the examples of NOOR and Metrography.

Stefano Carini (*1985, Torino, Italy) graduated from photography at the London College of Photography and the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Denmark. He worked as a photo editor at the progressive Danish photo agency NOOR in Amsterdam, and on the editorial team of World Press Photo. He is part of the PanAut Collective, which features photographers from Italy, the Czech Republic, and Germany, and which prepared the This Place – My Place workshop for the DOX Centre.

The lecture is held in English language.

Capacity is limited.

Admission: adults 60 CZK / students FREE

Reservation required: bara@dox.cz

This event is being held in cooperation with the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University and with the support of the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Centre in Prague.