Kurdistan, mon ami
Text : Leslie Lepers – Traductrice Kurde : Bayan Salman
Publisher : Editions Odyssée
Date : 28/10/2024
ISBN : 978-2-494767-16-4
Book size : 24,5 x 28,5 cm à la française
Language : French and Kurdish
328 pages
The book is a unique document on thirty years of Kurdish history. In March 1991, Lâm Duc Hiên, a humanitarian and war photographer, travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan with the association Equilibre to help the Kurds bombed by Saddam Hussein. For the last ten years, he has been travelling around the region with his box of images, trying to find the people he immortalised in 1991 and 1994. The faces he found, marked by the passage of time, tell the story of a mountainous region where Muslims, Christians, Yezidis, Kakais, Mandeans, Zoroastrians and Jews live side by side. Thirty years later, stories and improbable encounters resurface. Two men he had photographed would later become presidents. The photographer gets ever closer to people’s faces: ‘I make my portraits as close to people as possible, until I can see myself in their pupils. I see myself in their eyes.