Raising voices in a
dangerous world

Photojournalist Reza’s dedication to
education and vibrant journalism takes
him to some very tough places

PEACE CORRESPONDENT: Reza

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Reza is on the phone from Caen, a town in Normandy that was liberated by Canadian and British troops in a bloody battle in July 1944. Its massive War Memorial Museum, visited by thousands of schoolchildren a year, had until recently hosted a selection of the famed photographer’s works on war and peace, and, says the Iranian-born Paris resident, it’s an appropriate place to launch a new venture to boost press freedom in the developing world—something he’ll be speaking about at greater length at this weekend’s Blue Metropolis literary festival.

“After 30 years in war zones,” says Reza—born Reza Deghati in Tabriz, Iran, in 1952—“I have come to think of myself as a peace correspondent, not a war correspondent.” Having travelled to some of the most dangerous hot spots in the world throughout a career that’s had his work published in National Geographic, Figaro, The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, among many others, he says it has become his moral responsibility as a citizen of the world to help make the world more peaceful, open and communicative. In 2001, he founded AÏNA, the Afghan Media and Culture Centre, to help train journalists in a country that had been silenced by the Taliban’s grim rule. Besides training journalists, he also helped publish an educational magazine called Parvaz—meaning to fly or soar—addressing family health and other issues. It’s one of the few forms of education the medieval-minded Taliban don’t have a problem with, he says.

“Everybody likes it,” he says. More so than the school buildings the coalition forces built since 2001, many of which—especially those housing girls—have been destroyed. That was a reaction Reza says he warned the coalition about, without success. “From the very beginning, I told the coalition, ‘Don’t build schools.’ In the Western mind, we think of schools as buildings. But we have to find the educational tools that are appropriate, and send them to homes. I warned them that the schools would be burned, but not my magazines…. And remember, the Taliban were trained in buildings the UN built!”

Meanwhile, Reza expects the global recession to claim an unexpected victim—the growing sense of journalistic freedom in Afghanistan. Most of the projects are funded via national aid agencies, and those agencies are facing deep cuts as revenues dry up. “The crisis hit the West immediately, but the real catastrophe will soon be in the Third World,” he says. “It will be a real disaster. The first thing that will be cut is aid. Afghanistan and other countries will be hit very, very badly.”

Reza says he expects some papers to close, and will be travelling to Kabul soon to try to staunch the bleeding. “We put the seeds there, but they are not trees yet,” he says. Press freedom, he says, “is going to be very badly affected.” And he estimates a vibrant online presence is 20 to 30 years distant.

But he vows to press on, despite the difficulties, and expand AÏNA’s model into other countries, but with a focus especially on training women. “Afghanistan was the laboratory,” he says. By using informal visual education, he wants to “use images to convey human knowledge and culture. The challenge is finding what images are suitable for what community.”

REZA WILL SPEAK AT THE WRITERS IN
PERIL SERIES AT THE DELTA HOTEL
(777 UNIVERSITY) ON THURSDAY,
APRIL 23, 8:30 P.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 24
(IN FARSI), 7 P.M. AND SUNDAY, APRIL
26, 3:30 P.M. FOR MORE INFO, VISIT
METROPOLISBLEU.ORG.