Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Homes bear scars of past conflicts


via CAAI

Wednesday, 01 December 2010 15:00 Emilie Boulenger

AT the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Kent Klich, a Swedish photographer who studied psychology, presents an astonishing series of images on the destruction of the interiors of Palestinian houses in the Gaza strip and on Romanian orphans after the fall of Ceaucescu regime.

In Gaza, Kent Klich started to work in 2001, meeting parents, brothers and sisters of suicide bombers. In this small territory, he heard a lot of sad stories, but he was also asked why pictures of Gaza only showed men with weapons and women crying.

Still in touch with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, in 2008, during Operation Cast Lead, he decided to go back there for a specific project. “I could only enter the territory one month after the facts and I decided to take pictures of empty apartments.” When printing the images, he wrote the name of the family who lived there, producing a book of photo albums of spooky houses.

Though these pictures have been taken a long time after the destruction, it is amazing to see how a destroyed interior without anyone inside can tell a story and corresponds to a point of view.

The black and white pictures of the Rumanian orphans are another kind of testimony, but just as striking as the Gaza series of images.

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