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The Book of Destruction: Gaza – One Year After the 2009 War
Kai Wiedenhöfer
28/01/11—12/02/11
Tuesday to Saturday, 11am – 6pm, FREE
For over 20 years, the award-winning German photographer Kai Wiedenhöfer has documented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2009, he won the inaugural Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Prize, a competition in which photographers were assigned the subject of the Gaza Strip and awarded a grant to undertake a new body of work around it.
In November 2009 Wiedenhöfer returned to Gaza to witness and record the destruction of its buildings and the injuries inflicted on its inhabitants during the Israeli offensive, known as Cast Lead. The result is a harrowing collection of landscapes and portraits that are at once deeply moving yet full of humanity and dignity – an uncompromising indictment of the ruthless immorality of war.
Born in Germany in 1966, Kai Wiedenhöfer studied photography at the Folkwang School in Essen and Arabic in Damascus, Syria. He has received numerous awards, including the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Alexia Grant for World Peace and Cultural Understanding, World Press Photo Awards and the Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. He has published three books – Perfect Peace (2002), Wall (2007) and The Book of Destruction (2010). Currently he is working on a book about separation barriers and borders worldwide.
Fresh from its widely publicised premiere at the Musée d’Art modern de la Ville de Paris, this is the first time that The Book of Destruction will be exhibited in the UK. Funds raised through the exhibition will be used to support the individuals featured in his photographs. Visitors are asked to support them by donating to the Welfare Association (UK), which works in partnership with local NGOs in Gaza implementing community-based rehabilitation programmes.