Katharina Mouratidi
born 1971. From 1993-1999 Study of Fine Arts, Art College Berlin-Weissensee with following
postgraduate studies of Visual Communication.
Mouratidi's projects focus on social and political topics and movements. Her photographs and features have been prizewinning and published throughout Europe, examples are: Cicero, Magazin of Frankfurter Rundschau, European Photography (Germany), Marie Claire and Colors Magazine (Italy), Ojo de Pez (Spain), British Marie Claire (UK). They have been exhibited in many individual and group shows worldwide and are included in several collections such as Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg, Germany), George Eastman House (Rochester, USA), Musee de la Photographie (Charleroi, Belgium), Museum of Photography (Thessaloniki, Greece).
She ist foundation member of the
"Gesellschaft für Humanistische Fotografie" and lives and works as a freelance photographer in Berlin, Germany.
The exhibition of the loftgalerie makes it possible to get to know and see again a fine selection of Mouratidi's reportage photography of the last decade.
Stories 2000 - 2010
Breast Cancer (2000)
For the series Breast Cancer Katharina portrayed 22 women, all of whom she found through the placement of short advertisements in Berlin newspapers. She did not select them, but accepted them in the sequence of their phone calls so as to give all women interested the possibility of participation, independent of their physical state or health. Thus emerged photographs of women between the ages of 25 and 63. They had had surgery, had had a mastectomy, a breast - rebuilt, or not, and wore a prothesis, or again, not. All the photographs were taken in close co-operation with the women portrayed. Her intention was to photograph them as they wanted to present themselves in front of the camera and in public. There were no special rules to observe in the studio; the participants only had the responsibility to pose according to their own interpretations and in the way they would like to be represented, as women in our society affected by breast cancer.
The pictures were taken with a 4 x 5 Inch format camera. Some of the images were shown in the series Breast Cancer Placards in 90 metro stations all over Berlin, or have been used in the Breast Cancer Demonstrations.
The Other Globalisation - "Why do you do what you are doing?" (2002-2005)
For three years Katharina portrayed activists of social and political movements from 43 countries: farmers and workers, students, reindeer-breeders, native and indigenous people, scientists, Christians, atheists, citizens and revolutionaries. She asked all of them, including many internationally recognised, prominent personalities like Peace Nobel Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu and Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics Joseph Stiglitz the same question: "Why do you do what you are doing?" In answering this question, the interviewed related a great deal about their own stories and personal motives for their engagement. The answers Katharina collected are as exceptional as they are varied spectacular and normal, aggressive, loving, full of longing, idealism and hope, but also moving, alarming, and thought-provoking. Considered together, they have only one thing in common: the certainty that, for the survival of humanity and our planet, a change in consciousness leading to another globalisation from which all people profit, as well as to a sustainable relationship with the environment is absolutely indispensable. The work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and internationally. The book on this series has been published by Edition Braus.
Sarayaku - a village in resistance to oil drilling (2007-2009)
The community of Sarayaku is located on the banks of river Bobonaza in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, one of the few remaining inviolate regions of the Amazon Basin. The remote village can only be reached by dugout canoes or by little four-seater airplanes. The Kichwa Indians have inhabited this territory for centuries and still cultivate their traditional lifestyle, supporting themselves mainly by fishing, hunting and sustainable agriculture.
In the area, large oil reserves are located. Although the community received the official title for its 135,000 hectares (333,000 acres) of ground in 1992, the natural resources below the soil, according to Ecuadorian law, belong to the state, which has divided the land into blocks and is auctioning concessions for oil exploitation to international companies. American ConocoPhilipps, for instance, or the Argentinean CGC, have had drilling rights on Sarayaku territory since 1996.
Because of its grave environmental and social impacts to be observed especially in the north of the country, where oil operations have been going on now for the last 40 years the community decided to strongly oppose any development of the commodity on their land. Offers of money from the oil companies haven't swayed them. Even a proposal of 60,000 US dollars to the village's governing council was rejected. As a consequence of their opposition, tribal leaders as well as traditional authorities have received death threats and the natives have suffered physical attacks and other means of intimidation at the hands of the Ecuadorian military and the oil companies.
The inhabitants of Sarayaku have worked out a unique strategy to oppose oil exploitation: their Plan de Vida. This plan is intended to regulate the sustainable development of the community during the next 50 years and includes programs for the preservation of the primary rainforest, the repopulation of threatened wildlife, a health-care program for all villagers, as well as an education program including kindergardens, several schools, a college, and the first university in the middle of the jungle, a cooperative project with the Universities of Cuenca and the Spanish Llerida. Internet access via satellite and their own website in Spanish and English is helping the Sarayaku people to make their cause and activities known internationally.
Exemplary in their efforts for self-determination and the preservation of their living space as well as their traditions, the Sarayaku are sought-after speakers all over Latin America. In lectures and workshops they teach other indigenous communities about sustainable, autonomous municipality management and show them possibilities for resistance against the oil companies and woodchoppers which want to destroy their livelihoods, as well as effective ways for the protection of the rainforest.
Nayakrishi Andolon - Peasants in Bangladesh (2010) - Documentation of Nayakrishi Andolon, The Movement of New Agriculture and better living in Bangladesh.
The Nayakrishi practice of ecological agriculture has its own unique philosophy and design. "Andolon" means movement. It is a movement of - mainly female - farmers growing from the grassroots: to ensure that the living environment and food is free from toxic and unwanted chemicals; to promote the conservation and regeneration of seeds so as to protect and enhance biodiversity and genetic resources; to resist dispossession and centralization of natural resources through centralized structures such as 'seedbanks' and/or 'genebanks' (which exclude farmers from having access to the common property of the community); to search for alternative methods and institutions for the conservation of biodiversity and genetic resources on-farm through structures controlled by the community/village; to ensure food security and nutrition; to search for agricultural practices that can conserve other life forms, mainly endangered species; to become culturally aware of the intricate role played by all those species of nature that are not the object of immediate human needs, etc. Currently, there are more than 300.000 families all over Bangladesh engaged in Nayakrishi agriculture.
The 2008 report of the The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) "Agriculture at a Crossroads" demands a global paradigm shift towards a more humane and sunstainable agriculture. Projects like Nayakrishi Andolon show the way.
In the beginning of 2010, during several weeks, Katharina Mouratidi travelled around Bangladesh and documented the work of "Nayakrishi Andolon" as well as "Nayakrishi Seed Network".
