An exhibition of Jamal Penjweny’s photographs will be in the Bongo Club for 4 weeks from May 13th to June 10th, showing as part of the Edinburgh Reel Iraq Festival www.reelfestivals.org
Jamal Penjweny is a Kurdish photographer, born in 1981 in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is a graduate of The Photography Institute in Australia. His photographs are intimate and at the same time striking. Penjweny’s compositions add intrigue to his powerful subject matter by creating immediate visual interest combined with layered narrative.
“Although I want no part of war, war leaves its mark on me and I have come to consider both what is happy and sad in our lives by its measure. Thus, in my mother’s mind, I was born ‘when the Iran-Iraq war started’, and my grandfather would recall he got engaged ‘during World War I ‘. It seems that war has become part of our lives. Our children do not know of peace and as a result grow up playing war. In Slemani, a child made a picture of a passenger plane which had bombs falling from it. Above the picture he had written ‘I can travel’. It made me wonder. I asked him, “why is your passenger plane dropping bombs?” His answer was, “Why? Is there a plane which does not throw bombs?!”. Through my photos I try to erase the idea of war “
Major news agencies and publishing companies have published his work including: Al-Sharql Awsat, Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, Yahoo News, Polaris Images, Zuma Press, The Guardian, Human Rights Watch, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Sipa Press, Jeune Afrique Magazine, Driknews Agency and World News Network.
