The Scavi Scaligeri International Photography Centre ,in collaboration with Agenzia VII and Grazia Neri, presents the second great collective exhibit of Agenzia VII, proposing a reflection on war reporters. Eight contributions, chosen by the authors themselves amongst many reportages made in different war zones and situations, show the value and the necessity of a job that narrates about history.
Photographers at Agenzia VII were invited to choose, among the different kinds of reportages they used, a subject showing their job as war correspondents. Thus, eight reportages will be on exhibit in the rooms of the Scavi Scaligeri International Photography Centre and will entertain visitors in an exhibit ranging from Yugoslavia to Iraq, in a period between 1991 to 2003.
War is the main topic of the reportages, shown from different perspectives: sophisticated, but at the same time conventional (Gary Knight in Iraq), or primitive, like the one in Gaza (Christopher Anderson). A war amongst nations (Chechnya) between members of different ethnic or religious communities (Afghanistan, Yugoslavia), the clashes in the streets between the police and those opposing a regime, more violent than usual (Indonesia).
The exhibit starts with three important conflicts in the '90s: Yugoslavia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Since 1991 Ron Haviv has been taking pictures of the consequences of the disappearance of the Yugoslavian Federation and the growing war, up to Slobodan Milosevic's arrest ten years later. Christopher Morris
Shows war in Chechnya fought by the Russian since the end of 1994. In 1996 the Taliban set up their regime in Kabul: James Nachtwey takes pictures of the scars they left.
History, tough, does not repeat itself only in Chechnya or Afghanistan: three years after the first war of the rocks (1987), in the same occupied territories where Christopher Anderson works (the Gaza Strip) the so-called, second intifada broke out.
The movement created in Indonesia when President Suharto was toppled (1998) has its origins in popular unrest as well: John Stanmeyer follows its evolution.
Alexandra Boulat takes pictures of Baghdad and its inhabitants, struggling during American bombing raids, whilst Gary Knight closely follows the intervention of the ground forces. Antonin Kratochvil, shows, in the desert, around the cities or on the street edges, a terrible, devastated landscape, the concrete scars, both human and material, left by this war.