Photographic Exhibition on Women’s Rights Across the World and Reportage on the Humanitarian Crisis in South Sudan  

Project location: SPAIN, Barcelona
Project start date: August 2017 - Project end date: February 2018
Project number: 2017-048
Beneficiary: Associazione Witness Image

 

This project, which received a grant from the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation, Delegació a Catalunya, includes a photographic exhibition and a photo reportage on the emergency in South Sudan in the Upper Nile State by Witness Image.

The objective of the exhibition "i Witness" is to invite visitors to participate to a journey of the state and reality of women in various parts of the world, in order to be able to witness their strength and at the same time despair as they experience situations that are often unimaginable.

The theme of the exhibition will be the respect and defence of human rights, with a privileged look towards women, the part of humanity that is most affected by hunger, wars, famine and lack of freedom. The following issues will be addressed: young brick workers, often minors, in India and Nepal, forced to move stones for hours and hours under the hot sun of Asia Minor; the Mauritanian slave women, real domestic prisoners; the girls living in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, involuntary vendors of their own body in the only Muslim country in the world where prostitution is legalized; the widows of Iraq and Afghanistan who have lost their husbands or children in war; the refugees of the Sahel and Bengal, who have emigrated because of the damage caused by the global production system or due to the sea level rise and desertification; women crossing the Mediterranean Sea with their children on a small boat, in search for a dignified life; those who suffer the violence of being forced to leave their expropriated homes in Cambodia; desperate refugees in one of the largest refugee camps in the hemisphere, that of Dadaab in Kenya, an inhumane place where there is lack of food and water; HIV or malaria sufferers in Zambia, socially marginalized because of their infectivity; and finally, the inhabitants of Rwanda belonging to the Batwa ethnicity living in the forests, their natural habitat, having to leave because of the transformation of the areas into protected ones for hunting, military exercises or tourism exploitation, throwing them into absolute poverty.  

The exhibit will be inaugurated on the 16th February 2018 and be on until 16th March at the Galleria Lo Spazio in Barcelona.

The  photographic reportage in South Sudan will instead aim to document the state of emergency of the country, through the support of some NGOs currently funded by the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation. Some of the photographs taken in South Sudan with women as central theme will be included and be part of the exhibition.

Witness Image has, since 2010, had at the heart of its mission and through the delivery of over 50 reportages to date, the will to testimony through photography the world disorder of our day. Images and stories around the causes and consequences of the war, women abuse, hunger, poverty, injustices, natural and environmental disasters. Moreover it strives to fight for the preservation of the “spirit” of any place, namely the traditions, habits and customs that contribute and render unique the identity of a human community. Witness Image Association includes together with Luca Catalano Gonzaga, a team made of experts in journalism and communication who will promote, at national and international level, joint projects across a range of channels and venues: web, print, photographic exhibitions at festivals and contests, grant proposals, workshops and meetings. 

 

Associazione Witness Image
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