(Warsaw, may, 21, 1966)
Monika Bulaj is a photographer, journalist, travel writer, documentalist, TED member. She specializes in social and religious issues. Born in Poland, she studied Polish philology at the University of Warsaw, where she also attended courses in anthropology, history, biblical studies and philosophy. She has lived in Italy since 1993. Until 2002, she was an actress and theatre director and devoted part of her work to teaching in the field of theatre. In 1985 he began his first research in Poland on ethnic and religious minorities, particularly the Lemkos (Łemkowie), Jewish memory and Roma peoples. Subsequently, his field of research was extended to Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, Russia, Afghanistan, Haiti and Cuba.
Since 2001 he has exhibited his photographic works in a hundred solo exhibitions in Italy, Germany, France, Egypt, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Spain, and in other collectives in the United States, Brazil and Russia.
Since 2002, he has published reports and photographs on the beliefs and interlacing of its borders, nomadic peoples, rights and social conditions of the weakest strata of the countries he travels through, in various Italian and foreign newspapers and magazines, including Courrier International, Gazeta Wyborcza, Geo, Corriere della Sera, Internazionale, National Geographic, New York Times, Time, La Repubblica, RevueXXI, Al Jazeera, Granta Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review.
He has written scripts for documentaries, including the film Romani Rat (2002) by Maurizio Orlandi on the extermination of the Roma (porajmos), produced by the Associazione Culturale Laboratorio Novecento in Turin.
Director, photographer and screenwriter of the documentary Figli di Noè (2006, producer: Lab80 film).
Has written and performed in various NUR public spaces. Appunti afghani, with theatrical direction by Daria Anfelli, and Dove gli dei si parlano/Where Gods Whisper, a narration that she calls «performative reportage, with images, films, sounds, songs and stories».
He has published books of literary and photographic reports with Contrasto, Alinari, Skira, Frassinelli, Electa, Bruno Mondadori and National Geographic.
His report “Haiti degli spiriti” (Haiti of the spirits) represented La Repubblica in the Daily Press section for the Visa d’Or in Perpignan in 2015.
In 2014 she was awarded the National Non-Violence Award, awarded for the first time to a woman, with the following motivation: «for her activity as a photographer, reporter and documentalist, capable of highlighting the humanity that exists in the most hidden and yet evident confines of the earth, of showing war through its consequences, of investigating man’s soul, his craving for religiosity, tenderness and dignity. Monika Bulaj makes visible the invisible, through the exploration of the soul of people, creating with the image the unity of the human».
«My aim, he said at the TED Global Fellowship 2011, is to show the lights behind the curtain of the big game, the little worlds ignored by the media and the prophets of a global conflict»
His works have been acquired by “Leica Colletions”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- “War is Only Half the Story” (Dewi Lewis Publishing 2018, ISBN 9781911306214)
- “Where Gods Whisper” (Contrasto, 2017, ISBN 9788869653148)
- “Nur. Zapiski afgańskie” (National Geographic, 2017, ISBN 9788375967500)
- “Nur. La luce nascosta dell’Afghanistan” (Electa, 2013, ISBN 9788837092054)
- “Genti di Dio”, prefazione di Moni Ovadia (Postcart, 2012, ISBN 9788886795890)
- “War is Only Half the Story” (Aa Av vol.4, The Aftermath Project, 2011)
- “Boży Ludzie” (Bosz, 2011, ISBN 9788375761047)
- “Genti di Dio”, prefazione di Moni Ovadia (Frassinelli, 2008, ISBN 9788876849312)
- “Rebecca e la pioggia” (Frassinelli, 2007, ISBN 9788876849671)
- “On the Move” (Skira, 2007, ISBN 9788861304383)
- “Figli di Noè” (Frassinelli, 2006, ISBN 9788876849190)
- “Gerusalemme perduta”, con Paolo Rumiz (Frassinelli, 2005, ISBN 8876849041)
- “Donne, storie e progetti” (Alinari, 2005, ISBN 8872924820)
- “Libia Felix” (Bruno Mondadori, 2002, ISBN 9788861591691)
SOME PHOTOS
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