Walid Raad: I Might Die Before I Get a Rifle, Hasselblad Award 2011

Walid Raad: I Might Die Before I Get a Rifle, Hasselblad Award 2011

The Hasselblad Award is an international photography award. Since 1980 it has been presented annually, with the exception of the year of Erna Hasselblad's death, 1983. The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photo graphy is recognized as one of the most important prizes for photography in the world today. The Hasselblad Award is granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievements". This may be an individual who has made a pioneering achievement in photography, who has had a decisive impact on younger generations of photographers, or who has implemented one or more internationally significant photographic projects. Lebanese/American artist Walid Raad has been selected as the 31st winner of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. The award was presented to Raad in New York on 8 March 2011. Each year an exhibition of works by the award winner opens at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg and a book is released. This year, as in the last four years, a book will be produced as a co-operation between the Hasselblad Foundation and Steidl. Walid Raad is one of the most original and singular practitioners using photography today. His project "The Atlas Group", in which Raad generated original ideas about the relationships between documentary photography, archive and history, has been widely acclaimed. In order to document and investigate Lebanon's contemporary history, Raad has developed innovative methods of approaching war imagery and exploring political and social conflict. Raad's work allows us to question the traditional iconography of war photography and speculate on visuality, memory and violence. The dead weight of this quarrel hangs contains several unpublished works from The Atlas Group project. Walid Raad, born in Chbanieh, Lebanon in 1967, works with photography, video, text, installation, and performance. He has exhibited in many prominent national and international exhibitions. In 2007 Raad won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and received the Alpert Award. In 2009 he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Raad lives in New York and has been Associate Professor of Art at The Cooper Union School of Art since 2002.<br><br>