Bearing Witness: Syrian Refugee Project

Documentary Photojournalism

How do we tell stories? How can we as filmmakers, photographers and citizen journalists communicate the horrors of conflict?

In this project, filmmaker Tina Gharavi and Alessio Romenzi, will collaborate to consider their subject and the ethics of storytelling.

Working in conflict zones presents a number of challenges: ethical, safety, issues of representation and how to tell stories of the other and ourselves. According to Eduard Steichen “The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself”. What issues are there working in a conflict zone? What is the role of the documentarian and what are the ethical considerations of storytelling? Can art be made out of conflict? These questions will be explored by two veteran documentarians who are experienced in dealing with conflict and storytelling.

Alessio Romenzi has worked in war zones as a photojournalist for over several years, while Tina Gharavi, a filmmaker, has examined the construction of truth in documentary and fiction practice. In March of 2012, they met while working on the issue of Syrian refugees in Northern Lebanon and began a conversation that has led to a photo and moving image collaboration centred on storytelling, truth and vultures.