duckrabbit’s OPEN EYE series airs in the USA

‘Intensely intimate, unlike anything I have seen in a long time‘

Taken from review written on In The Dark

‘Two original pieces of work with two really original photofilms and two extraordinarily good presenters / photographers. Their photography is exceptional and blended with the audio … Terrific storytelling in every sense.‘

Tony Phillips, Senior Commissioner, BBC World Service

Open Eye is a unique cross platform series not about photography, but about the people and the landscapes with which photographers form deep and visceral bonds.

The work is a collaboration between the BBC and duckrabbit. It was launched in January 2011 on the BBC World Service, BBC NEWS ONLINE. This week we’re delighted that the programmes will be broadcast on a large number of radio stations right across the USA. To view times and stations please go here.

In part one Lebanese photographer Dalia Khamissy attempts to uncover what happened to the estimated 17,000 people kidnapped during the Lebanese civil war. Her journey takes her to a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut where she meets seventy nine year old Amina Hassan Banat. In 1981 Christian militants took four of her sons, whom she has never seen again. Even after all these years, Amina still has hope that she will be reunited with her sons, but as one politician tells Dalia, ‘Lebanon is a country of mass graves‘.

In the second feature, acclaimed photographer Joseph Rodriguez turns his lens on a group of young Muslims growing up in the city of Malmo, Sweden. It’s a city increasingly divided on racial, religious and cultural grounds, and one in which Joseph discovers many young Muslims feel they are treated as second class citizens. One young woman tells Joseph, ‘there’s two groups in Sweden, the Swedish and the immigrants. The immigrants are united in the same shithole that Sweden puts us in‘.