Libya: dreaming a revolution

• Photographer
  FRANCO PAGETTI, Italy
• Studio
  VII
• Website
  http://www.viiphoto.com

In February 2011, an uprising against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's 41-year-old autocratic rule, has left an estimated 1,000 people dead and many wounded. Several parts of Libya, including Libya's second largest city, Benghazi, have been taken by anti-government rebels, who have since formed an Interim Transitional National Council. Benghazi, where rebel headquarters are located, has sustained air strikes and ongoing clashes by forces loyal to Gaddafi and is threatened by heavy fighting in nearby Ajdabiya, near the Egyptian border. In the capital, Tripoli, pro-government demonstrators take to the streets with support for their leader. The conflict has led to an immense exodus of people by land, sea and air, while many remain stranded.

Franco Pagetti, member of VII photoagency. has covered the conflict in Iraq since January 2003, three months before the start of the war.

Since 2004, he has constantly been based in Baghdad on assignment for TIME Magazine. His images have captured the horrors of war, the brief flowering of hope after the downfall of Saddam Hussein, the rise of insurgent and terrorist groups, and more recently, the inexorable descent into a bloody sectarian civil war.

Pagetti has been a news photographer since 1997, and most of his recent work has involved conflict situations: Afghanistan (1997, â??98, 2001), Kosovo (1999), East Timor (1999), Kashmir (1998, 2000 and 2001), Palestine (2002), Sierrra Leone (2001) and South Sudan (1997).

He works on long term projects around war, conflict and social issues.