TEN DAYS IN GAZA TEAM

Giuseppe Aquili was born in 1974 in Ancona, Italy. He studied Photography at the Experimental Design Centre in Ancona where he was influenced by the Marché photographer Mario Giacomelli and Pep Bonet as well as the artists Egon Schiele and Alberto Giacometti.

He worked in Italy for several years before coming to England in 1999 where he has involved in photographic projects to Oman, Albania and Nigeria as well as in the UK. Images from a UNICEF/Al Madad project photographed in Niger were selected to show at the 2009 Sony World Photographic Awards, in Cannes, as well as on the UN calendar of that year.

In 2010 Aquili went to Gaza with an Al Madad/Save the Children project to photograph children who had been affected by conflict trauma. Images from the project formed part of the Children of Gaza Exhibition.

Born and raised in Iraq, Azzawi has lived in London since 1976, where he has successfully created his own identity in the discerning circles of the mainstream art world, championing and choosing to express himself in a style that is essentially Arab.

Considered one of the finest colourists among contemporary Iraqi artists, Azzawi’s paintings echo the resplendent colours of his homeland. Affected like all Iraqis by his country’s terrible events, he makes ever daring use of sizzling reds and bold purples to reflect these tragic events: dark, rich colours that are, as he admits, very Arab…like him!

His vibrantly coloured abstracts in oils may be reminiscent of his Sumerian heritage, but his works are not just expressions of Iraqi folklore. Azzawi’s work looks ahead taking his art beyond the folkloric and sovereign art form. It produces the kind of contemporary art that can be showcased in international art galleries, where it is appreciated by a wide section of culturally divergent and influential people.

Over the decades, Azzawi has built an international reputation as a brilliant artist. His work has been exhibited extensively in Europe, the Middle East, the US and India. His paintings have been bought by the British Museum, the Library of Congress, the Museums of Modern Art, Damascus, Amman and Tunisia as well as the Institue du Monde Arabe. He has recently shown at the Ashmolean, Oxford.

In 2010 Dawton and McFarlane (with Aquili) travelled to Gaza in the aftermath of the Israeli “incursion” to photograph (for Al Madad/Save the Children) the effect on young people and the challenging landscape in which they and their families were living.

Photographs taken during their time in Gaza formed a part of the Children of Gaza Exhibition.

Previous to the Gaza project Dawton and McFarlane (with Aquili) went to Niger in 2008 during the drought on an Al Madad/UNICEF brief. They travelled the entire length of the country including to Dabaga to photograph a well that had been funded by the Al Madad Foundation.

In 2013 the pair entered what was then the largest refugee camp in the world,
Zaatari, Jordan. The resulting images and film, known as the
Hotel Zaatari Project, toured the Middle East as well as the UK.

In October 2014 the TMCP V.VC. Vorovsky factory in Tikhoretsk, Russia,
invited Dawton and McFarlane to photograph their workers, continuing a
tradition of recording the service given and the sacrifices made by the
employees of the factory from before the time of the Soviet Revolution, through
the Great War to the present day. An exhibition of the images taken opened
at the TMCP factory in February 2015 and then transferred to Moscow. A book has also been published.

Recent projects have included the photographing and filming of the Syrian
refugee camps in the Bekka Valley, Lebanon, as well as in the Palestinian
camps in Beirut.

In May 2022 Dawton and McFarlane photographed the flood-prone char islands in Bogra, Bangladesh, and spent a further eight days photographing in the Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar. An exhibition of their photographs from the Rohingya camp (today the largest refugee camp in the world) is touring and a book has recently been published.

For further information and on how to pre-order Ten Days in Gaza please contact either AnthonyDawton (northern hemisphere) or Jim McFarlane (southern hemisphere) at dawtonmcfarlane@gmail.com