Exhibition “IN IRAQ”

SARAJEVO, BiH / Duplex Gallery in Sarajevo opened the exhibition of photos by Laurent Van der Stock. Exhibition will be open until December 25th, 2010.

LAURENT VAN DER STOCKT

“The photos were taken in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, from the beginning of the American military intervention - when Iraq was accused by the Adminstration of George W.Bush of possessing weapons of mass destruction - to the end of the operation “Phantom Fury” which crushed the Sunnite bastion of Fallujah.

A few sets of pictures taken during this time of chaos.
Different circumstances and situations.
In or out of confusion.
Arranged face to face and side by side so that they can compare one with the other, and in order to disrupt the perception we have of them and of the history.”

Laurent Van der Stockt

BIOGRAPHY

He was born in 1964 in Belgium. After an illegal entrance to Romania, he shows the living conditions under the Ceauscescu regime, comes back there after its fall, shortly before joining the Agency Gammy in 1990.
A photographer of all conflicts: from Ex-Yugoslavia to Afganistan, from Tchetchenia to Gulf War, including Africa and Middle East, he covers the events for the international press.
He stays in prison and is seriously wounded several times. The first time in 1991, in Vukovar, where a piece of shrapnel pierces his left arm; in 2001 in Ramallah, a knee hit by Israeli sniper; then in 2005 in Falloujah in the arm again. In Sierra Leone, he loses the friend Miguel Gil Moreno, a companion from the experience in Tchetchenia, who was still repeating “You are crazy… I follow you only because I know you have two kids…”
A photographer whose humanity confuses with itself, he doesn’t limit himself to be a “war photographer”; he is a witness of the effects of the cyclone “Katrina”, portrays the young people of the suburbs of Bastia for the National Fund of Contemporary Art, gives and account of the political instability in Haiti after the departure of Aristide.
His work has been rewarded with the Award for Excellence - a journalism Prize of University in Columbia - in 1991, with the Paris Match Award in 1996, with the Bayeux Prize for war correspondents in 1995 and with the Prize of the scoop Festival of Angers four times between 1991 and 1996. His photos have been in particular exhibited during the festival “Visa pour l’Image” in Perpignan (1994 - Les enfants de Kabul / Children of Kabul) and in the Maison Europeene de la Photographie / European House of Photography (2009 - Our Fellow Man).

Anne-Lise Large