Walid Raad

Walid Raad
2011 Hasselblad Award Winner

www.hasselbladfoundation.org

Walid Raad is one of the most important contemporary artists from the Middle East. He has created a highly influential and internationally recognized body of work that includes photography, video, text, installation, and performance. In his challenging works, Raad has developed innovative methods for imaging war and for exploring political and social conflicts in art. He has also generated original ideas about the relationship between photography, documentary practice, violence and history.

The exhibition at Hasselblad Center presents a broad overview of Raad’s work from the early 1980s until today, among others his remarkable project The Atlas Group (1989–2004), about the Lebanese wars (1975–1990), through which he received widespread attention. In this project Raad often attributed his documents to imaginary characters as he investigated how events of extreme violence were lived, experienced and represented. Also included in the exhibition is Raad’s ongoing series Sweet Talk (1987–present), an investigation of Beirut, its residents and spaces. This series consists of photo assignments Raad gave himself to capture the changing face of his home city.

The exhibition Walid Raad – 2011 Hasselblad Winner will be shown at Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden, until January 15, 2012.

In conjunction with the exhibition a book, Walid Raad – I Might Die Before I Get a Rifle, Hasselblad Award 2011, has been produced in collaboration with Steidl Verlag, Göttingen.

Walid Raad, was born in Chbanieh, Lebanon in 1967. He lives and works in Beirut and New York, and is Associate Professor of Art in The Cooper Union, School of Art, New York, since 2002.

Hasselblad Foundation
www.hasselbladfoundation.org
info@hasselbladfoundation.org

For more information:
Jenny Blixt | T: +46 31 7782154 | jenny.blixt@hasselbladfoundation.org
www.hasselbladfoundation.org
Ekmansg 8, SE 41256 Gothenburg, SWEDEN

The Hasselblad Foundation is an independent non-profit entity, created to promote research and academic teaching in the natural sciences and photography. This aim is achieved by means of donations and grants for scientific research, through the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, as well as several scholarships and grants for research projects in photography.

Victor Hasselblad (1906–1978), the pioneering Swedish photographer and industrialist, manufactured a camera which has become world famous, not least in connection with the manned trips to the moon. After his death, the Hasselblad Foundation was established in 1979 under the terms of the last will and testament of Dr. Victor Hasselblad and his wife Erna.