Last year, Javier Martín and Ricardo García Vilanova travelled along the entire central migration route to Europe, from Niger and Mali to Libya, via the Mediterranean itself and Europe.
The result of this journey has been a joint work, with a multitude of interviews and words from the protagonists themselves. Published by the publishing house Blume under the title No sacred ground for the vanquished y The Libyan Crossroads: deadly passage to Europe. In fact, there are two books. One of photography with images taken in Libya and the countries in the area from 2011 until 2020, and another text-only book that reviews the history of the Sahel, the impact of the fall of Al Gaddafi and the current war in Libya, and explains how the mafias dedicated to all kinds of smuggling of arms, people and fuel that articulate North Africa and the Sahel and even negotiate in Europe operate.
The photographs document the war in Libya since the 2011 revolution, moments of the 2015 migration crisis, the war against the Islamic State in 2016 and the shipwrecks and the latest rescues in the Mediterranean. There are unique photos of ISIS prisons, migrant detention centres, desert departures in Niger, and more.
The meeting can be followed through the virtual platform Zoom of the Three Cultures of the Mediterranean Foundation and/or through the Foundation's Facebook page.
About the participants:
Javier Martín Rodríguez (Salamanca, 1972) is currently EFE's delegate in North Africa, based in Tunis, and one of the most experienced journalists on the ground in the Middle East, where he has lived since 1996. Founder of EFE's first permanent correspondent in Iran (2009-2011), he worked for more than a decade at its Middle East headquarters, from where he covered wars such as Iraq (2003) and Lebanon (2006) as a special envoy. From the end of that year until 2008, he founded the new Arabic news service in Cairo at the EFE news agency. EFE Agency. In 2011 he witnessed first-hand the fall of Muammar Gaddafi and in 2012 he travelled to Syria as a special envoy to the civil conflict there. In January 2014 he was appointed delegate of the EFE Agency for Israel and Palestine, a position that gave him the opportunity to cover the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza. He is currently working in Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.
Ricardo García Vilanova. Freelance photographer for over 20 years. Specialising in conflict zones and humanitarian crises, he has reported on the Arab Spring and ISIS conflicts. His photographs have been published in Life, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Liberation, Paris Match, The Guardian, The Times, Die Welt, Der Spiegel, Stern, etc. He has also collaborated with organisations such as the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch. As a freelance video journalist, he has worked with CNN, BBC, France24, Aljazeera, Channel 4, VICE, PBS, Euronews, among others.
The Wall Street Journal nominated him for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 and he has been honoured by organisations such as World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year (POY), NPPA, International Photography Awards (IPA), Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Prize, Moscow International Photo Awards, Lens Culture, Days Japan International, Mika Yamamoto International Journalist Award and International Press Club. As a cameraman he has a Rory Peck Award.
Leopoldo Blume has been editor and director of Blume since 1989, a publishing house founded more than 50 years ago and dedicated to photojournalism, art and photography, among other subjects. He holds a degree in Modern History from the Central University of Barcelona.
Its catalogue includes works by numerous internationally renowned photographers such as Gervasio Sánchez, Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, Sandra Balsells, Miquel Dewever-Plana, Andoni Canela, Sergi Cámara, Steve McCurry, Joao Pina, Joana Biarnés, Edward Burtynsky, Edu Ponces, Alessandro Imbriaco, Alisa Resnik, Kirill Golovchenko, Daniela Tkachenko, Brassaï, Rena Effendi, Kim Manresa, Carl de Keyzer, Gideon Mendel, Richard Misrach, Susan Meiselas, Lana Slezic and Pepe Navarro, among many others.
He has been editor of the Magnum agency's photography books, as well as the Spanish-language edition of the annual World Press Photo project since 2008, and has been a member of the jury for numerous national and European photography prizes.
In collaboration with:
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