176 - Alba Zari
© Alba Zari
Alba Zari is a visual artist working with photography, video and sound. She was born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1987 where she lived until the age of eight. She later moved to Italy, first to Trieste and then to Bologna, where she graduated from university with a degree in film. She went on to study documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in New York city, and then continued her studies in photography and visual design at the NABA in Milan.
Alba’s photographic practice explores social themes and includes a study of Italian mental health centres; eating disorders in the USA; Places (2015), a book and a photographic project which analyses the visual communication of ISIS propaganda; and Radici (2013), a documentary project on the vegetation of the Mesr desert in Iran. Her first book The Y - Research of Biological Father was released by Witty Books in 2019 and was born out of a journey in search of her origins through the father she never knew.
Alba is currently working on an ongoing project called Occult, a visual study of the propaganda of the cult Children of God, into which both her grandmother and mother were indoctrinated and Alba herself was born. The project will be exhibited later in 2022 and is being developed into a feature length documentary film entitled White Lies. She released her first short documentary FreiKörperKultur recently.
On episode 176, Alba discusses, among other things:
Use of research
Children of God cult
The documentary feature film she’s working on
Belief in photography and truth
The Y - finding out the truth about her biological father
Why she ‘created him’
Finding the man that signed her birth certificate
Getting the strength to do the project, Occult
Earning a living
NFTs
This episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book Club - the latest and greatest photobooks, expertly curated and delivered to you door with free shipping and no hassles.
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