Moises Saman
— The Arts Club, London 16 September 2015 — 18 January 2016

Multi-award-winning documentary photographer Moises Saman presents key works from his widely acclaimed body of work ‘Discordia’, taken in conflict zones across Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Tunisia.

Bearing witness to some of the harshest conflicts, disasters and greatest stories of our time, Saman captures a unique ‘auteur’ aesthetic in his work which draws nuance and beauty out of often very difficult themes. He builds trust with his subjects, from school children to soldiers, focusing on their emotions and humanity to capture what is happening behind the headlines.

As Saman explains, he is “interested in searching for the positive commonalities in human spirit, to expose those intimate moments among people that remind us of dignity and hope in the face of conflict.”

Ambiguous and unsettling, these images capture moments just before or after a main event by focussing on the peripheral details of a scene which hold implications of a broader, violent conflict. An abandoned playground damaged during fighting in one of the front lines in Aleppo holds the scars of a past conflict; a single leather chair and meeting room table are thick with dust within Gaddafi’s underground complex in Tripoli, symbolic of his then fast-waning power.

Saman has received numerous awards for ‘Discordia’, including the Eugene Smith Memorial Fund (2014), the Henri Nannen Preis (2014), the World Press Photo (2014) and Pictures of the Year International (2012, 2014).

The exhibition is curated by Amelie von Wedel and Pernilla Holmes.