DESCRIPTION
War Landscapes is a photo project based on an exhibition and a photobook with about 100 black and white images taken in fifteen years of work in major conflict areas of the world. They range from the ruins of Kabul in 2001 to the gutted houses of southern Lebanon in 2006, the ghost town of Libya in revolt in 2011 to the refugee camps in South Sudan and Iraq in recent days.
I took a lot of photos of despair, screaming and pain but for this book I chose images of landscapes, places marked by the destruction and the effects of war. A way, I hope, to reflect away from the noise and excitement about all conflicts of modern times.
Battlefields, skeletons of aircraft, concrete walls, fortresses and military posts: so, in the almost complete absence of the human figure, to reflect not on a particular conflict but about all wars.
Some say that the great nations have become such by the war. It is not true. The war does not build, but destroys it. It destroys the lives of men, their homes, their monuments, their cities. And the nature, the landscape, the beauty. The great civilizations that have developed because of culture, peaceful coexistence, to the foresight of those who governed them. The war has always been a step back in history. The ruins that rise over the fields of battle are the proof.
AUTHOR
Alfredo Macchi, journalist and photographer, was born on June the 25 th 1967 in Sorengo, Lugano (Switzerland). He covered some of the most important events of the last years and he has been in many war areas: Kosovo, Afghanistan, Middle East, Iraq and Lebanon, South Sudan.
Awards:
2002 The Saint-Vincent Prize, the most important journalism awards in Italy
2009 The Ilaria Alpi International Tv Award for the best tv reportage
2010 The International Marco Luchetta Journalist Award
2011 The National tv Award Guido Carletti and the “Enzo Baldoni Memory Award”
2012 City of Anguillara Award and “Fiorino d’argento” at XXX Florence Award
2013 The “Molinello” Award for journalism and the “Mediterranean Journalists Award”
2015 Silver medal at PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris
2015 First place documentary photobook at IPA, International Photograpy Awards
Exhibitions :
2002 “Two months in Afghanistan”, Libreria Hoepli, Milan
2005 “An hope’s wave”, Triennale, Milan
2006 “First vision”, Bel vedere Gallery, Milan
2006 “Beyond differences”, Immagimondo, Erba
2008 “Mpamaky Vato”, FotoGrafia International Festival, Rome
2008 First International Biennial of Photography of the Islamic World, Tehran, Iran
2008 “My Public space” Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, Holland
2015 “War theatres” InArs Gallery Rome
2015 International Photo Project, Milan
