Kameel Ahmady - Visual Ethnography: Biography

Kameel Ahmady originally hails from Iranian Kurdistan; now a London-based anthropologist and visual ethnographer, he has a background in media, and has worked extensively on issues relating to local cultures, migration, minority rights and Middle East affairs. He has travelled widely, most especially taking an interest in everyday human experience which persist in the face of conflict and poverty - in areas such as Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq both before and after the wars. He has study interest in the four regions of Kurdistan (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria). He has worked on independent news broadcasts to Europe, as well as Kurdish media and also provided support and consultation on local the linguistic, cultural and political contexts to international media groups.

Some of his more recent visual work included two short documentary pieces filmed during his last visit to Iran/Iraq, dealing with cross border smuggling in the region,& its relationship to underdevelopment in Kurdish regions, as well as film and photographic reports and ethnographic research on changing Yezidi identity in the last century, free media in Europe, and democratization in the Middle East. He read for a post-graduate degree in anthropology and visual ethnography from the University of Kent, Canterbury where his research dealt with media as a source of identity discourse amongst youth. His research was about Media consumption, conformity and resistance: a visual ethnography of youth culture in Iranian Kurdistan. He has also published widely on themes gender, dispora, multiculturalism and modernity in the Middle East and other regions. He is currently working in some community development projects with focus on popular youth culture in Europe and the Middle East. In his work, he tries to give voice – reflecting both art and fact - to the people and places he encounters; often obscured from the majority understanding of the world we live in.

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