This week on Hit The Streets with Valerie Jardin, Grabriel Hill talks about his project titled ImPortraits. For several months Gabriel photographed refugees in his studio and each of them brought their most prized procession. I hope you enjoy this important conversation.
Project description:
People that have to flee from their country, can only take the things with them that are most important to them. The non-profit project ImPORTRAITS portrays refugees with their most important item and gives them the platform to tell about their origin, the reason, why they had to abandon their homes and why the chosen item means so much to them. The projects outcome is a photo book and an exhibition and all of the outcome will be donated to the refugees. We live in abundance, while others are forced to give all up. The viewer of the picture is encouraged to reflect as well, – What is really important? What would I take with me, if I had to flee?
Who is Gabriel Hill?
Gabriel Hill is a commercial portraiture Photographer and an author with the magazines c't Digital Photography (USA) and c't Digitale Fotografie (EU) living in the heart of Basel, Switzerland. His work has been published in various magazines in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, USA and the UK. Aside from taking pictures, he loves to spend time with his wonderful fiancée Rebecca, their conceited cats Kelly & George and the rest of his family. Already as a kid he was fascinated discovering the world through the view of a viewfinder and this fascination lasted till today. He studied the art of Headshots under a world renown New York based photographer and was his official associate photographer till 2015.
He absolutely loves his job which got him in personal contact with amazing artist like legendary New York backdrop painter Sarah Oliphant, world renown photographer
Mark Seliger or the famous Annie Leibovitz Studio.
Besides working as a freelance photographer he's a photographer with Rex Press Agencies, one of the world's leading photographic press agencies and picture libraries.
As for his non-corporate photography he works with Fotogen, Switzerlands oldest and one of the most prestigious model Agencies.
The ImPORTRAITS project was nominated as one of the 7 best works in Swiss photography by an international jury for the SWISS PHOTO AWARD 2016 and was part of the Swiss Photo Award exhibition in Zurich in June 2016. In September 2016 the ImPortraits portrait series went viral and was published in uncountable medias all around the globe.
