Denmark went into COVID-19 lockdown right after the first workshop of the semester, so neither Solmaz nor Sabri were able to fully experience living and learning in a new country. But they attended online classes that, both confirmed, managed to push them to explore projects in-depth.
For Solmaz Daryani, DMJX was the first formal education program since embarking on her self-taught photography journey. She joined the Spring 2020 semester seeking to gain an in-depth knowledge of photography, develop organizational skills, learn about the industry and meet diverse, yet like-minded people. Solmaz confirms that this scholarship at DMJX program gave her all that, and more. Her best wish now would be to attend the Photo 2 program next year to continue learning and growing her art.
Solmaz is proud to share with us her first video project, an uncompromising story of a homeless woman who wishes to be a mother.
She is currently working on her final project, focused on a transgender woman and the challenges she faces during this deep transformation.
For Sabri Khaled, being in Denmark with DMJX is definitely an eye opening adventure. He is very happy to have been awarded a second VII Academy scholarship to attend the Photo 2 program starting in August. Hopefully by then restrictions will have lifted and he’ll be able to experience studying at DMJX without any pandemic limitation.
Like Solmaz, a highlight for Sabri this semester was to work on his first video project: he documented a student who decided to build a house on the island of Bornholm, his birthplace, as well as lockdown residence.
His final semester project is very personal, a diary about his relationship with his girlfriend when they were both on COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark.
Solmaz and Sabri also worked together on a collaborative photography-design-writing assignment, a visual narrative featured in a class-project magazine titled “it wasn’t supposed to be like this”.
We’re proud to announce that Salih Basheer from Sudan has been awarded the Shahidul Alam Grant in honor of the great importance Shahidul Alam has for the development of independent photojournalism in the World, and Asadeh Besharati from Iran receives the Alexandra Boulat Grant in remembrance of the late, prize winning French photographer, who was a member and co-founder of VII Photo Agency. Both will attend the Photo 1 program at the Photojournalism Department at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. We’ll share more about them in a future news post.
