029 - Tanya Habjouqa
© Tanya Habjouqa
Tanya Habjouqa is an award-winning photographer, journalist and educator whose practice links social documentary, collaborative portraiture and participant observation and whose principal interests include gender, representations of otherness, dispossession and human rights, with a particular concern for the ever-shifting sociopolitical dynamics in the Middle East.
Tanya trained in Journalism and Anthropology and has an MA in Global Media with an emphasis on Middle East Politics from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She produces in-depth narratives that offer nuanced alternatives to mainstream media depictions of her subjects, exemplified by Occupied Pleasures, her project depicting the every day lives of Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. The work received support from the Magnum Foundation, achieved a second place World Press Photo award in the Daily Life category in 2014 and was published as a book Occupied Pleasures by FotoEvidence in 2015. It was critically acclaimed and was judged by numerous critics as one of the best photo books of that year.
Tanya's work has been exhibited worldwide and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Institut du Monde Arab, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is a founding member of Rawiya, the first all-female photography collective from the Middle East, which, as Tanya mentions in the interview, may not remain all-female forever.
STOP PRESS: It has just been announced that Tanya has joined photo agency Noor Images as one of two new nominees. Many congratulations!
In episode 029, Tanya discusses:
Early years
A job in Iraq
An important portfolio review
Tunnels and sheep
Humour
Deviating from the established narrative
The Rawiya collective
Juggling work and motherhood
Book mentioned: Travels With A Tangerine by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
“Increasingly that’s how I’m approaching everything in my storytelling is gut instinct …and research, research, research.”
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