Exhibition “Ma ville me manque”, portraits de déplacés de Mossoul from May, 31 till July, 2nd
Press release
Paris, 4th May 2017 – From May, 31st until July, 2nd, La Bellevilloise (20th arrondissement in Paris) hosts the exhibition « Ma ville me manque », portraits de déplacés de Mossoul in its Halle aux Oliviers. The pictures realized by the photographer Livia Saavedra tell the stories of the daily life of displaced populations of Mosul. Première Urgence Internationale is currently intervening in Iraq a few kilometers away from the frontline and is on the initiative of this photographic project.
From May, 31st till July, 2nd, La Bellevilloise (19-21 rue Boyer, 75020 Paris) hosts the exhibition « Ma ville me manque », portraits de déplacés de Mossoul in its Halle aux Oliviers. The public will discover the pictures taken by Livia Saavedra during her visit in Iraq with the Première Urgence Internationale’s teams, which daily intervene among displaced populations in the country. The opening event of the exhibition will be organized on June, 1st at 7 PM.
The city of Mosul, second city in Iraq with its population, has fallen into the hands of the Islamic State on June 10, 2014 which let many inhabitants to flee the city. An offensive was then launched on October 2016 and has generated a new wave of displaced people.
As an expert in portraits, Livia Saavedra reached to sense sights and moments of life of families who have had to flee Mosul since 2014.
Through this exhibition supported by the European Union Head office for the Humanitarian aid and Emergency services (DG-ECHO), the spectator is invited to meet these people who had to flee, who lost everything and who live with the hope to have the possibility to go back to their city Mosul one day. For Hélène Quéau, Head of Operations of Première Urgence Internationale:”this exhibition leads us to meet the inhabitants of Mosul who have been uprooted and who share their stories and their hopes with the public”.
Première Urgence Internationale has led actions in Iraq since 1997. The association is currently managing public sanitation facilities of Baradarsh camp, which hosts displaced people from Mosul and from the nearby villages which are controlled by the Islamic State. The teams address the populations’ needs in various sectors: water, hygiene and sanitation, schools building, distribution of kits for daily life, psycho-social activities. The NGO has also moved its mobile clinics, which are composed of medical and psychosocial staff near the frontline. The aim of Première Urgence Internationale in Iraq is to provide a humanitarian response to the needs generated by displacement of populations.
Livia Saavedra
Livia Saavedra was born in 1978 of Argentinian descent. She began photography in the end of the 90’ with an occupation that interrogates the place of the link, of human beings in shifted, hostile spaces and environments. This occupation led her to travel in all France and across Europe, a life experience and an intense learning of photography. She joined the image school of the Gobelins in 2000 and then joined the photojournalism formation at the EMI CFD in 2002. She began to make portraits for the press and for communication agencies after an internship at Nova Magazine with Elisabeth Scaglia. She adds an international dimension to her career path from 2011 and focused on the women who are stricken with obstetrical fistulas in Ethiopia. A delicate photographic work to make understand a feminine intimacy that is mistreated and a cause to social repudiation. This press report has notably been exposed at the Ministry of Women’s Rights. She then covered Ebola outbreak in West Africa and questioned the social and economic consequences of this pandemic. Livia Saavedra tries to avoid compassionate and esthetical photography and deems the absolute and the sense to not have to be changed into a beauty staged in an artificial way. Livia adopts an approach full of gentleness and slowness, which enables her to capture intense emotions during her reporting.
Discover the long form “Ma ville me manque”
About Première Urgence Internationale
Première Urgence Internationale is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious international NGO, which vocation is to defend basic human rights, such as those set out in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in 1948. Our aim: to help populations regain independence and dignity.
Our teams are daily mobilized to address basic needs of populations who are endangered, marginalised or excluded as a result of natural disasters, war and economic collapse. We thus intervene in complementary domains such as health, food security, nutrition, rehabilitation and construction of infrastructures, access to water, hygiene and sanitation, economic recovery and protection. Première Urgence Internationale brings aid to more than 6 million people in 21 countries located in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle-East, in the Caribbean and in Europe.
More information on : https://www.premiere-urgence.org/en/
Press contact
Sophie Odeh – [email protected] – 01 55 66 99 66 / 07 83 42 57 19
