INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

On May 9, the photography workshop on illegal immigration IMCK organized in Sulaymaniyah in cooperation with STATT has been finalized. It was the first step in the project on illegal immigration. In total eleven participants received a certificate issued by IMCK. The trainer was Eddy van Wessel, a Dutch photographer who has won international prizes. See the movie about the workshop See our Facebook for pictures and more information about other workshops.

May 8 and 9, IMCK will start in cooperation with STATT a photography workshop on illegal immigration in Sulaymaniya. Many young people in Iraqi Kurdistan want to leave the country. But as visas are hard to come by, many use smugglers and buy passports with a visa. This illegal immigration has many bad consequences. Therefore IMCK wants to inform Kurdish photographers, journalists and bloggers about the problems, and organize a documentary festival and a photo exhibition on the subject. The photography workshop will be the first step in the project on illegal immigration for Kurdish media. Photographers have been invited to participate on how to make a good photo story. Eddy van Wessel , a Dutch photographer who has won international prizes, will come to work with fifteen participants from Iraqi Kurdistan. IMCK tries to improve the quality of the media in Iraq. STATT will be involved by providing experts on illegal immigration, who will provide the background...

Alumni from the IMCK postgraduate course Media bo Khalk (Media for People) visited the Mesopotamian marshes in the southern Iraqi province Basra in March 2012. The old students were on assignments for international and local media. During the late eighties and nineties draining of the marshes took place under the Saddam regime. Before 2003 the marshes shrunk to 10% of their original (20.000 km2) size. Nowadays they have partially recovered, but drought along with upstream dam construction and operation in Turkey, Syria and Iran have hindered the process. The alumni went to the city of Chibaish, the Central and Hammar Marsh to see how people were living there and the problems the area faces. After finishing their education about 70% of all students found work in print and broadcast journalism in Iraq and outside. Munaf Al Saidy (27) is a talented print journalist and photographer for the German news agency Deutsche Welle . See the photo-story Munaf Ghanim has made for DW about...

Copy rights are a problem in Iraq, as nothing has been arranged by Iraqi law. International copyright laws are not adhered to, local ones are not implemented well. That has serious consequences for photographers selling their work. For that reason, IMCK has organized on Saturday 17th of March in coordination with IMS and the photography agency Metrography in Sulaymaniya, a conference on copyrights and photography. The day was led by IMCK-trainer Khaled Suleiman and Metrography Director Kameran Najam. Member of the parliament Saman Fawzy spoke of the existing laws in Kurdistan on copyright and photographer Chris de Bruyn gave some practical advice in dealing with copyright with international agencies. The conference did not end with talk only, a committee will be formed to research how a change in Iraq and Kurdistan can be established.

Eddy van Wessel returned to Kurdistan to conduct another workshop on portrait photography. Van Wessel is an internationally admired photographer who traveled the world ( http://www.eddyvanwessel.com/ ). The training, that focusses on portrait photography but also covers basics, started on October 14, 2011 in the IMCK training hall in Erbil and lasts three days. The 11 participants are from Erbil and Kirkuk. Some of them work as reporters who also make pictures, some work as photographers.

IMCK trainer and photographer Soran Naksbendi trained reporters in Kirkuk on how to make pictures that can be used for the new Kirkuk newssite IMCK is setting up. The reporters were taught how to make pictures that tell a story, and were informed on some technical issues concerning photography. The training in Kirkuk lasted two days and ended on February 4, 2011.

International photographer Eddy van Wessel returned to Kurdistan. He offered twenty photographers from Iraq a masterclass in photography. The participants are both from the Kurdish region and from Iraq. The workshop takes place from August 26 -29, 2009, at the training hall of the IMCK in Sulaymaniya. Because of the size of the group, the class is split up in a Kurdish morning session and an Arabic afternoon session. Van Wessel has been training at IMCK two times before. His participants are mainly working for the main newspapers and websites in Sulaymaniya, and for media in Arabic Iraq. The workshop is co-sponsored by SIMI (Supporting Independent Media in Iraq) in Baghdad. On one of the training days he had help from co-trainer and AP-photographer Yahya Barzinji, who talked about the practical sides of working as a photographer.

Eddy van Wessel, the international photographer from Holland, is back in Kurdistan. He will be doing a workshop for his Kurdish colleagues in Irbil on telling a story in a picture. The best pictures from the last workshop he did in Sulaymaniya (in June 2008) can still be seen in the training hall of the IMCK. The workshop in Irbil (from November 6-10) has been organised by IMCK in coordination with Media Work Development Organization.