"DRONES AND YOU:  War, Privacy and Photography" will go into detail about US government’s use of drones in contemporary warfare and in issues of privacy.  Tomas will explain his research on the subject and the process behind his project.   Since 2004 several thousand people have been killed by covert US drone strikes.  Although we live in the most media-connected age in history, the public has scant visual record of the drone war and its casualties.  In response to the lack of attention being receive in the media, Tomas decided to attach his camera to a small drone and travel across America to photograph the very sorts of gatherings mentioned in strike reports from Pakistan and Yemen —weddings, funerals, groups of people praying or exercising. He made a list of “targets” to observe from the sky by reading hundreds of these reports. He also flew his camera over settings in which drones are used over America to less lethal effect, such as prisons, oil fields, and the US - Mexico border.  By creating these images Tomas aims to draw attention to the changing nature of personal privacy, surveillance, and contemporary warfare.

This project has received overwhelming international support and acclaim.  Partners for the project include: Harper’s Magazine, the Pulitzer Center, TIME Magazine, the Getty Images Grant, the Aaron Siskind Foundation, and Open Society Foundations.  It has received the following awards: ICP Infinity Award for Photojournalism, Pictures of the Year International Award of Excellence Issue Reporting, White House News Photographers Association, First Prize Multimedia, World Press Photo 2014 Second Prize Contemporary Issues, and TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Photos of 2014
 
The talk will be moderated by Nancy Uhlar Murray who recently retired after 25 years as Director of Education at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts in the United States. In the years after September 11, 2001, she focused on the US government’s attacks on civil liberties and international law, within the US and abroad.  She has spoken widely on unconstitutional arrests and detention, torture, surveillance, militarized policing, and the use of drones, writing weekly blog postings about these issues for the website PrivacySOS.org.  Her other writings include Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the ‘Homeland,’ an ACLU publication that appeared as a 10-part series on Truthout.org, "Profiled: Arabs, Muslims, and the Post-9/11 Hunt for the 'Enemy Within” in the award-winning book, Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims, and an innovative curriculum for schools, Rights Matter: the Story of the Bill of Rights.


This talk forms part of the opening reception for the exhibition Blue Sky Days by Tomas van Houtryve. Balcony 19:00h

The talk will be in English tranlated to spanish

• Organized byDOCfield>15 Festival de fotografia documental Barcelona