artBahrain.org

GOTHENBURG. THE HASSELBLAD Foundation is pleased to announce Lebanese/American photographer Walid Raad as the recipient of the 2011 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. The prize, consisting of SEK 1,000,000 (approximately USD 150,000), a diploma and a gold medal will be presented to Walid Raad in New York on March 8, 2011. An exhibition of the award winner’s work, Walid Raad – 2011 Hasselblad Award Winner will open on November 12, 2011at the Hasselblad Center at the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden, where the Foundation has its head office. In connection therewith one or more seminars will be arranged with the award winner.

The Foundation’s citation regarding the decision to award the 2011 prize to Walid Raad is as follows:

Walid Raad is one of the most original and singular contemporary artists using photography. He has been widely acclaimed for his project “The Atlas Group”, in which Raad generated original ideas about the relationship between documentary photography, archive and history. In order to document and investigate Lebanon’s contemporary history, Raad developed innovative methods
of approaching the imagery of war and the way political and social conflict can be explored in art. Through Raad’s work we are able to question the traditional iconography of war photography and speculate productively on visuality, memory and violence.

This year’s award committee, which submitted its proposal to the Foundation’s board of directors, consisted of:

Sergio Mah (chair), Curator and Professor at University Nova of Lisbon, Portugal

Clément Chéroux, Curator, Department of Photography, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Charlotte Cotton, Creative Director, National Media Museum, UK

Thomas Seelig, Curator, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland

Carol Squiers, Curator, International Center of Photography (ICP), New York

Walid Raad has created a highly influential and internationally recognized body of work that includes photography, video, text, installation, and performance, and which engages with the recent history of Lebanon while it questions the nature of visual and historical representation in new and unexpected ways.

Raad came to widespread attention with his remarkable project The Atlas Group (1989-2004) in which he researched and documented the contemporary history of Lebanon. Raad’s extensive body of work explores documentary practice, historical writing, and the visual representation of violence. In The Atlas Group (1989-2004), which concentrates on the protracted wars in Lebanon, Raad and his occasional collaborators collected and produced photographs, videotapes and other documents. Raad often attributed his documents to imaginary characters as he investigated how events of extreme violence were lived, experienced and
represented in fiction and non-fiction. While his work references the brutal realities of daily life in Lebanon during a crucial phase of its history, it also promotes reflection on how history is conceived, narrated, written, and imaged. With intelligence and originality Raad has conceived innovative methods to represent war and the way political and social conflict can be explored in art.

Among his most acclaimed series from The Atlas Group (1989-2004) are “My Neck Is Thinner Than a Hair”, “Let’s be Honest, the Weather Helped” and “Secrets in the Open Sea”, all works which reinforce the qualities of photography as a distinctive means of scrutinizing visuality, memory and violence.