Publishing and Landscape: Contemporary Photography as Research #5 – Heartland
28.10.2022, 9:00 pm
Friday, October 28 at 9:00 pm at Lab27 in Treviso, as part of the second edition of "Publishing and Landscape: Contemporary Photography as Research", a series of public talks dedicated to the dialogue between landscape and contemporary photography in the editorial field, organized by Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche in collaboration with the cultural space Lab27.
The initiative, curated by Steve Bisson (professor and director of the Photography Department at Paris College of Art and artistic director of Lab27) and Patrizia Boschiero (coordinator of the Carlo Scarpa Prize and head of the Fondazione’s publications), presents four events between October and December 2022. Each session focuses on a different editorial project that stimulates discussion about the use of photography in studying and representing landscapes
The projects and books span a wide range: from architecture, arts, and theory journals to exhibition catalogs, from monographs to research volumes. They showcase the creative potential of photography when it intersects with the themes of landscape.
This session will present Heartland (Connectum, 2016), a book that collects a photographic research project conducted by Bosnian photographer Ziyah Gafić from 2001 to the present. It explores the lands, cities, villages, and people of Bosnia and Herzegovina almost twenty years after the end of the war. The work functions as a kind of mapping, combining images and detailed texts with the explicit aim of refocusing attention on the country after the global spotlight faded once the conflict ended.
Ziyah Gafić was twelve years old when the war in Bosnia began. His adolescence was marked by regular sniper fire, bombings, and hunger—the reality of life during the siege of Sarajevo, the longest of the modern era. Two decades later, Gafić, now an internationally renowned photojournalist and documentary photographer, chose to honor his homeland, still weakened by nepotism and systemic corruption. Heartland captures the quiet, the solitude, and the determination of people carrying on with life despite their communities, social rituals, and public life having been torn apart, and despite thousands of bodies still being exhumed from mass graves.
The book is both a tribute to a wounded land and a melancholic reflection of a man confronting difficult horizons and a lost paradise. Gafić began this work in 2000, with no funding or editorial contacts, doing the only thing he could: telling the story of his home, Bosnia.
The discussion will feature Ziyah Gafić, award-winning photojournalist and videographer, member of VII Photo Agency, and documentary filmmaker who collaborated with the Fondazione Benetton on documentaries for the Carlo Scarpa International Prize for Gardens in 2014 and 2017, alongside Steve Bisson and Patrizia Boschiero.
This event takes place at Lab27 in conjunction with the exhibition Post-War. On What Remains (opened Saturday, September 24, and running until November 27), which features works by Ziyah Gafić, Vincenzo Pagliuca, Nikita Teryoshin, and Filippo Bardazzi.
Publishing and Landscape: Contemporary Photography as Research #5 – Heartland
28.10.2022, 9:00 pm
Friday, October 28 at 9:00 pm at Lab27 in Treviso, as part of the second edition of "Publishing and Landscape: Contemporary Photography as Research", a series of public talks dedicated to the dialogue between landscape and contemporary photography in the editorial field, organized by Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche in collaboration with the cultural space Lab27.
The initiative, curated by Steve Bisson (professor and director of the Photography Department at Paris College of Art and artistic director of Lab27) and Patrizia Boschiero (coordinator of the Carlo Scarpa Prize and head of the Fondazione’s publications), presents four events between October and December 2022. Each session focuses on a different editorial project that stimulates discussion about the use of photography in studying and representing landscapes
The projects and books span a wide range: from architecture, arts, and theory journals to exhibition catalogs, from monographs to research volumes. They showcase the creative potential of photography when it intersects with the themes of landscape.
This session will present Heartland (Connectum, 2016), a book that collects a photographic research project conducted by Bosnian photographer Ziyah Gafić from 2001 to the present. It explores the lands, cities, villages, and people of Bosnia and Herzegovina almost twenty years after the end of the war. The work functions as a kind of mapping, combining images and detailed texts with the explicit aim of refocusing attention on the country after the global spotlight faded once the conflict ended.
Ziyah Gafić was twelve years old when the war in Bosnia began. His adolescence was marked by regular sniper fire, bombings, and hunger—the reality of life during the siege of Sarajevo, the longest of the modern era. Two decades later, Gafić, now an internationally renowned photojournalist and documentary photographer, chose to honor his homeland, still weakened by nepotism and systemic corruption. Heartland captures the quiet, the solitude, and the determination of people carrying on with life despite their communities, social rituals, and public life having been torn apart, and despite thousands of bodies still being exhumed from mass graves.
The book is both a tribute to a wounded land and a melancholic reflection of a man confronting difficult horizons and a lost paradise. Gafić began this work in 2000, with no funding or editorial contacts, doing the only thing he could: telling the story of his home, Bosnia.
The discussion will feature Ziyah Gafić, award-winning photojournalist and videographer, member of VII Photo Agency, and documentary filmmaker who collaborated with the Fondazione Benetton on documentaries for the Carlo Scarpa International Prize for Gardens in 2014 and 2017, alongside Steve Bisson and Patrizia Boschiero.
This event takes place at Lab27 in conjunction with the exhibition Post-War. On What Remains (opened Saturday, September 24, and running until November 27), which features works by Ziyah Gafić, Vincenzo Pagliuca, Nikita Teryoshin, and Filippo Bardazzi.
