- Gilles Peress
Gilles Peress (born
1946 ) is an internationally renowned photojournalist.Peress began working as a photographer in 1970, embarking on an intimate portrayal of life in a French
coal mining village as it emerged from the ashes of a debilitating labor dispute. He then joinedMagnum Photos , the prestigious photography agency founded byRobert Capa .Peress soon traveled to Northern Ireland to begin an ongoing 20-year project about the Irish civil rights struggle. One of his most famous pictures from this period captures a young man named Patrick Doherty moments before he was killed whilst crawling to safety in the forecourt of the Rossville flats during
Bloody Sunday (1972) ."Power in the Blood," a book that synthesizes his years of work in Northern Ireland, is the first part of his ongoing project called "Hate Thy Brother", a cycle of documentary stories that describe intolerance and the re-emergence of
nationalism in the postwar years. "Farewell to Bosnia" was the first part of this cycle, and "The Silence", a book about the genocide inRwanda , was the second.In 1979 Peress traveled to
Iran in the midst of the Revolution. His highly regarded book, "Telex Iran: In the Name of Revolution," is about the fragile relationship between American and Iranian cultures during the hostage crisis.Peress has also completed other major projects, including a photographic study of the lives of Turkish immigrant workers in
Germany , and a recent examination of the contemporary legacy of the Latin American liberatorSimon Bolivar ."I work much more like a forensic photographer in a certain way, collecting evidence. I've started to take more still lifes, like a police photographer, collecting evidence as a witness. I've started to borrow a different strategy than that of the classic photojournalist. The work is much more factual and much less about good photography. I don't care that much anymore about "good photography." I'm gathering evidence for history, so that we remember"
– Gilles Peress,
U.S. News , October 6, 1997Sources
* Gilles Peress Biography, NYTimes.com Specials (http://www.nytimes.com/specials/bosnia/peress.html)
* Interview with Gilles Peress(http://www.hossli.com/articles/2007/09/01/capturing-the-heat-of-the-moment/)
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