ANTONIO FACCILONGO - EXPOSURE INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

Habibi, which in Arabic means “my love,” is the chronicle of a love story set in one of the longest and most complicated contemporary conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian war.

This project is a way to envision the effects of the conflict on Palestinian families, analyzing the difficulties faced in preserving their human dignity and trying to understand the reality hidden behind the war. Palestinian political prisoners’ wives have turned to sperm smuggling in order to conceive children through in vitro fertilization from their husbands who are serving long- term sentences in Israeli jails. Over the past six years, more than 90 babies have been born this way.

There are around 7,000 Palestinians classified as security prisoners, with nearly 1,000 facing sentences of 25 years or more. Israel detains them if their alleged or convicted offenses are deemed threats, or potential threats, to national security. Conjugal visits are denied and Palestinian prisoners see their immediate family for just 45 minutes every two weeks, if at all. After a thorough body search, visitors are able to talk to their loved ones through a telephone from behind a glass window. Physical contact is forbidden, except with prisoners’ children, who are allowed ten minutes at the end of each visit to embrace their fathers. During these short visitations, with the excuse of giving gifts to their children, some of the prisoners smuggle their seminal fluid, putting it into empty pen tubes hidden inside chocolate bars. This is the secretmethod by which prisoners’ children are born and one of the few hopes for their wives to have a family.

Too often, this area is depicted only as a place of war and conflict, full of soldiers, military actions and weapons. I felt the need to delve deeply into the kinds of stories that are able to restore a human dignity largely ignored by the mainstream media. I believe it is very important to bring out the realities hidden behind the war because they allow us to understand better the daily lives of Palestinian people and to look at them in a new light, more intimate and delicate, helping to improve the understanding between different cultures.

The lives of women whose husbands are incarcerated are suspended in an eternal wait for the return of their loved one. They do in vitro fertilization in order not to surrender to the condition of imprisonment their husbands endure. They courageously face the difficulties of daily life by raising their children alone in a war zone.

Against all the odds, they reclaim the right to their future.

BIOGRAPHY

Antonio Faccilongo is an Italian documentary photographer represented by Getty Reportage, photography professor at Rome University of Fine Arts, and didactic coordinator at Centro Romano di Fotografia e Cinema.

After graduating in communication sciences, and then obtaining a master’s degree in photojournalism, he focused his attention on Asia and the Middle East, principally in Israel and Palestine, covering social, political, and cultural issues.

Documenting the aftermath of Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, he sought to unveil and highlight the humanitarian issues hidden within one of the world’s most reported conflicts, because too often it is shown only as a place of war and conflict.

His long-term projects about women and their families in Palestine have received several awards and grants, including the FotoEvidence Book Award with World Press Photo, a Getty editorial grant, the first prize World Understanding Award at POYi Pictures of the Year International, Best Color Documentary at Gomma Grant, first prize at LuganoPhotoDays, first prize at Umbria World Fest, first prize at the Kuala Lumpur Photo Awards, and second prize at PHmuseum; his work was also a finalist at Visa d’Or feature and for a Lucas Dolega Award, and was shortlisted at the Alexia Foundation.

Furthermore, his long-term projects have been exhibited internationally at numerous shows and festivals including the World Press Photo Festival, Les Rencontres d’Arles, the Zoom Festival, the PHmuseum online photobook festival, the Buenos Aires Biennial, and Visa pour l'image Perpignan. His work was also included on the global campaign #WomenMatter, against violence toward women, made by Dysturb.

His work and assignments have been published in some of the most prominent international publications including National Geographic, Time, Stern, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Geo, The Guardian, 6Mois, Paris Match, Focus, Sette, L'Espresso, Internazionale and many others.