GUILLEM VALLE Photographer

Barcelona 1983

I was born in Barcelona in 1983 and became interested in documentary photography at the age of 14 when I travelled to Sarajevo on an art student exchange program.

At age of 16 I started to work as a freelance photographer for local newspapers.

My first international story was about the anti-globalization movement’s response and demonstrations during the G8 summit of 2001 in Genoa.

While still a student at the Institut d'Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya, I travelled to Palestine on two occasions between 2001 and 2004, to photograph the Palestinian Intifada.I started to work with El País in 2003, all the while maintaining a personal agenda, developing a body of documentary work on socials issues here in Spain.

Since 2006 I have gone to Lebanon to cover such themes as: the war between Israel and Shiite militia Hezbollah and the conflict between Fatah Al-Islam and the Lebanese army in Northern Lebanon. These images mark the beginning of my collaboration with Sipa Press New York as a distributed photographer.

In the course of 2008 I covered Kosovo independence, as well as beginning a body of work on the PKK in Northern Iraq and the Uygur minority of the Xinjiang region of North-western China.

In 2009 I have worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo photographing the gold mines and the victims of sexual violence in the war-torn east of the country.

I'm currently based in Bangkok where I work as freelance.

 

Awards

-    World Press Photo 2011 3rd Prize Single Portrait
-    Honourable Mention Best of Photojournalism 2010
-    Ipa Award Finalist 2009

-    Alexia Foundation Finalist 2010
-    14th Gijon Award Finalist 2010

Exhibitions

-    Palestine: Dignity under Siege (Institut d’Estudis Fotografics de Catalunya. 2004)
-    Asia and Europe, Dialogue of Cultures (photography museum in Yekaterinburg, Russia. 2009)
-    Mines of the Conflict (Projection at Gijón Photo Festival. 2010)