In the days leading up to the Festival, there were some preliminary events, including a presentation of work by photographer, Asim Rafiqui. Asim is an independent photographer based in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been working professionally since 2003 and focuses on issues related to the aftermath of conflict. This interest has led him to produce work from Iraqi Kurdistan, Haiti, and border areas of Pakistan as well as the Palestinian Occupied Territories.
Asim’s work was commended to us by a friend who lives in Gaza and when we looked at this exhibition on-line we could see why. ”Portraits of Survival” are not just familiar pictures of broken buildings and destruction, but face-to-face encounters with real people behind the stories we hear from Gaza. They are very dignified and powerful pictures which leave a lasting impression, not least because Asim also insists that his images are accompanied by words: his personal diary accounts of the people he met, giving their names and citing some revelatory detail about their immediate circumstances. Asim read these words out as he showed the pictures to us and, without wishing to dramatise the effect, it was very moving. I think it was such an experience because Asim’s work enabled a connection (quite an intimate connection, despite the distance across time and space) between us sitting in Halifax and men, women and children in Gaza, whose eyes met ours through these remarkable images. See them if you can and read the words too – they must be taken together (AOG)
One of Asim Rafiqui's "Portraits of Survival."
