Home > 2018 Exhibition

Make a Wish

“Make a Wish” is a photo essay looking at the hopes and dreams of youth, aiming to create a testimony of our time. It’s inspired by the fact that youth should be the age of infinite possibilities. Most of the project has been shot in the Middle East and in situations linked to the Arab Spring revolution or in conflict zones where young people too often are deprived of their right to be young. The Arab Spring catapulted a taste of freedom in people across a region so long affected by dictators, Western foreign policies gone awry and poor social development. Spring turned to summer, fall and winter, months turned to years and the original revolution into something much different from the ideals of freedom shouted at squares across the region.

Abdallah rides his horse at dusk, a few days after a truce was announced and Operation pillar of Defense ended. Earlier in the week, riding on the beach would have been impossible due to the war. Abdallah works with his brother, together they perform on horseback in weddings and parties across, just like their father used to do. When asked about his future dreams and aspirations he says: To stay with my horse all the time, all my life.
Two men pass by the remains of what used to be the National Democratic Party’s landmark, torched on January 28th, 2011 during the escalations that came to topple Hosni Mubarak.
Maryam in her bedroom, a student of illustration at the Academy of Art in Tehran.When asked about her future dreams and aspirations she says: “ I do not have many wishes because I got everything I wanted, but many little wishes do exist...my last wish, is death. I came to this egoistic world where everybody think about themselves…I hope that when I die, I shall find the world that I was always looking for. ”

Loulou d’Aki Winner of the 2017 Photobook Prize

Loulou d’Aki (1978, Malmö, Sweden) is a documentary photographer, born and raised on the Swedish seaside. She graduated in photography at ISFCI in Rome, Italy and has since then lived and worked across Europe, North America, Japan and the Middle East.
She was a singer before she became a photographer. She speaks Swedish, English, Italian, French and gets by in German and Hebrew.