Hazara Exodus/The Unseen Road to Asylum

Sat 9 Aug 2014

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Presented by Barat Ali Batoor, Photographer.

In this lecture, Barat Ali Batoor will discuss his journey and the persecution of the Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan and their migration to Pakistan and then to Australia.

Barat Ali Batoor was born in 1983, in a family that was driven out of Afghanistan during civil war when most of his people were massacred. He returned to his ancestral country for the first time after September 11, 2001, when the Taliban regime was still in Kandahar. After visiting the devastation and destruction of 23 years of war, Batoor decided to draw the world’s attention to the plight of the Afghani people the problems facing the country. He chose photography as his medium of expression.

Batoor started photography in 2002 and launched his first solo exhibition in 2007. His works have been published in magazines, newspapers and catalogues such asThe Washington Post, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Stern, India Today, Afghan Scene, Risk Magazine,The Global Mail, The West Australian,Strategic Review and others.

He participated in the “Lahore Artist’s Residency” in Pakistan and was the 2009 recipient of a photography grant from New York’s Open Society Institute for the project “Child Trafficking in Afghanistan/The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan”. At the Nikon-Walkley Awards in Australia this year, Batoor won Photo of the Year and was a winner in the Photo Essay category.

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