A Ticket to  Baghdad is an ongoing visual project by Claudia Zanfi and Gianmaria Conti, after a long tour of Iraq in 2002. Promoted by the cultural agency aMAZElab Milano, it consists in a serie of interviews to students and artists at the ‘Baghdad Art Academy’ about their dreams for the future, their wishes, their hopes.

Invited to patricipate at the 10th International Photography Festival of Aleppo, the authors present for the first time - together with the video projection “Ten Baghdad Dreams”  - a serie of photographic images dedicated to the city and its architecture, focusing on the subject of public spaces for culture and the diffusion of book street markets and mobile libraries.

The images and interviews appears as expression of dreams - sometimes of nightmares. They represent the voices of the people and the exploration of the wishes of a young generation living in a conflict contest.

Iraq has been marked by political upheaval, dictatorship, war, embargo, exile, occupation. A thicket to Baghdad indicates an hypothetical terrain in which Iraqi students, artists, intellectuals have had to practice the ‘culture of necessity’, over the past three decades, as an act of salvation. It is a culture that does not belong to any aesthetic, ethic or political category; it belongs only to itself. The creation of these series of “social collages” reveals a degree of complexity and a critical attitude towards abuses in contemporary society.

10th INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL ALEPPO
Aleppo, Syria (1-20 October 2009)
The 10th Photography Festival of Aleppo is inviting 50 artists from twenty-four countries including Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Switzerland, Syria, USA, others….
The Old Electric Building is the center for the festival, a newly renovated vast industrial space.
The festival will presents exhibitions, workshops, lectures and conferences.
Le Pont Organization Aleppo is the main organizing body of the festival.

photofestival.aleppo@yahoo.com  -   photofestival@live.com  -  www.festival-aleppo.org