IRAQ: Scars and Exile
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PhotographerLori Grinker, United States
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Website
These images reflect the toll of war on Iraqi survivors faces, bodies and everyday lives as they struggle to make ends meet as refugees, or find new ways to live with the wounds of war.
Lori Grinker began her photographic career in 1981 while a student at Parsons School of Design when Inside Sports published her photo-essay about a young boxer as its cover story. During that time she met another young boxer, 13 year-old Mike Tyson, who she documented for the following decade. Since then, in addition to her reportage of events such as the destruction of the World Trade Center, she has delved into several long-term projects, and published two books: The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (Jewish Publication Society, 1989, 6 editions), and Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict (de.MO, March 2005).
Published in major magazines, her work has earned international recognition, garnering a World Press Photo Foundation Prize, a W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund fellowship, the Ernst Hass Grant, The Santa Fe Center for Photography Project Grant, and a Hasselblad Foundation Grant, among others. Her photographs have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world and are in many private and museum collections including: The International Center of Photography (ICP), The Jewish Museum in New York City, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Since April 2007, Grinker has been photographing and interviewing Iraqi exiles. Her photographs and multimedia piece, IRAQI: Scars and Exile, is now being exhibited and shown at galleries and universities, as well as on national television and the Web.
Another current project, Distant Relations: A Family History, explores the movement of a single family, her own, from Skuodas, Lithuania in the mid-1880s to eight countries around the world.
Between editorial assignments and personal projects, Grinker lectures, teaches workshops, and is on the faculty of the ICP in New York City. She is represented by the Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York and has been a member of Contact Press Images since 1988.
Awards Lori Grinker, born in New York, is an award-winning documentary photographer. Internationally exhibited and published, her work has garnered many awards, including a W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fellowship, an Ernst Hass Grant, and a Hasselblad Foundation Grant. Known for long-term, intimate projects that blend humanistic photography and fine art, she has published two books: The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women, and Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict. Her photographs are held in the collections of the Israeli Museum, Jerusalem; the ICP, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and San Francisco MOMA. A lecturer at Yale since 2010, and a faculty member at ICP, she teaches workshops around the world. Her current project, Distant Relations, explores through landscapes, portraits, and interiors her family’s diaspora. She is represented by Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York, Meo Represents, and has been a member of Contact Press Images since 1988.
