The Book of Destruction is a new exhibition by the award-winning German photographer, Kai Wiedenhöfer. Opening at the Mosaic Rooms in west London on 28 January 2011, Wiedenhöfer witnesses and records the destruction of Gaza’s buildings and the injuries inflicted on its inhabitants during the Israeli offensive in 2009, known as Cast Lead.

The Mosaic Rooms Press Release

Kai Wiedenhöfer
The Book of Destruction
28 January – 12 February 2011
The Mosaic Rooms, 226 Cromwell Road, London SW5 0SW

An exhibition by the award-winning German photographer, Kai Wiedenhöfer, entitled The Book of Destruction, opens at the Mosaic Rooms in west London on 28 January 2011.

For over 20 years Kai Wiedenhöfer has documented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2009, he won the inaugural Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Prize, a competition in which photographers were assigned the subject of the Gaza Strip and awarded a grant to undertake a new body of work around it.

In November 2009 Wiedenhöfer returned to Gaza to witness and record the destruction of its buildings and the injuries inflicted on its inhabitants during the Israeli offensive, known as Cast Lead. The result is a harrowing collection of landscapes and portraits that are at once deeply moving yet full of humanity and dignity - an uncompromising indictment of the ruthless immorality of war.

Kai Wiedenhöfer comments: “What stunned me most in Gaza were the methods that human beings develop to make an utter misery out of other people’s lives – with a ‘creativity’ which leaves in its wake a geography of utter destruction and pain.”

Born in Germany in 1966, Kai Wiedenhöfer studied photography at the Folkwang School in Essen and Arabic in Damascus, Syria. He has received numerous awards, including the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Alexia Grant for World Peace and Cultural Understanding, World Press Photo Awards and the Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. He has published three books with Steidl - Perfect Peace (2002), Wall (2007) and The Book of Destruction (2010). Currently he is working on a book about separation barriers and borders worldwide.

Fresh from its widely publicised premiere at the Musée d’Art modern de la Ville de Paris, this is the first time that The Book of Destruction will be exhibited in the UK. Funds raised through the exhibition will be used to support the individuals featured in his photographs.

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