Reza Deghati (born in Tabriz/Iran in 1952) is a French photojournalist of Iranian origin. Its author name is Reza.
In August 2015, he exhibited in Paris on the right bank of the Seine, facing the Palais d'Orsay, a fresco of 370 meters in length of color photographs on canvas four meters high on the challenges of the Middle East With the contribution of photographs by Syrian refugee children in a camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Giant fresco in right bank of Seine, Paris (2016)

Biography

Reza is one of the most recognized photographers of his profession on the international stage. He took his first photograph at the age of 14 and published two years later, in the lyceum, the newspaper Parvaz (the take-off), which led him to be prosecuted for the first time by the political police.

Young student of architecture, he clandestinely displays his photographs on the grids of the University of Tehran. For his artistic militancy against the Shah regime, he was arrested at 22 years, imprisoned for three years and tortured for five months. In 1979, he covered the Iranian Revolution for the Sipa Press agency and Newsweek magazine. He was definitively forced into exile in 1981 for his photographs denouncing the oppression of the Islamic Republic. He left Iran for New York and then Paris. Reza traveled to Lebanon in 1982 and reported on the siege of Beirut. He published the book Peace in Galilee-Beirut in 1983 and received his first prize from the World Press Photo for his reports in Afghanistan.

Reza photographed conflicts, revolutions, human catastrophes. Time Magazine, Stern, Newsweek, Geo, Paris Match, National Geographic and many other international newspapers regularly publish their reports.

1991 marked the beginning of a long and close collaboration with National Geographic. The following year, Reza opened his photography agency in Paris, Webistan. In 1998, he was a member of the jury of the World Press Photo and presented his first major exhibition "Mémoires d'Exil" at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. In 2000, National Geographic Channel directed a documentary on Reza's work and his meetings with Massoud, the "Journal du Front", which won an Emmy Award in 2002.

In 2003, he presented his work "Destins Croisés" on Grids of the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, which led to the publication of an eponymous book. In the same year, National Geographic's second documentary "Live Life" was released. In 2004, the book Insouciances was released. In 2006, Reza initiated the first outdoor exhibition of the National Geographic Society, of which he became a National Geographic Fellow, an Earth, a Family. The University of Missouri - Columbia School of Journalism - awarded him a medal of honor for all of his work.

His first book of retrospective on thirty years of reports, Between Wars and Peace is released in 2008. On this occasion, a major exhibition is organized at the Caen Memorial. In 2008, he also embarked on an initiatory journey with his son, Delazad Deghati, from Beijing to Paris, told in the book Parallel paths.

The photographs of Reza are as many testimonies of the chaos of the war, their ravages and the confusion of the Men caught in the turmoil. They tell the world's cultures, traditions, history and, more than anything else, Reza's infallible hope for a better world. The reports also provided an opportunity for exceptional encounters: from the crossed child in a wartime Sarajevo, to Commander Massoud, to the challenges on the roads of exile.

Influenced by encounters, Reza began working in humanitarian action in 1983 by training Afghan refugees in the field of photography. From 1989 to 1990, he assumed the role of consultant for the United Nations in Afghanistan, in charge of the reconstruction of the country after the war. In 1996 in Rwanda, working with UNICEF, giving parents a chance to find their children lost in exile, by introducing refugees to photography. 12,000 portraits of children are posted in camps for displaced populations. In 1998, Reza became involved in the construction of a school for refugee children in Baku, Azerbaijan. In 2001, he founded the international NGO Aina, which opened a first center in Kabul, Afghanistan. Starting from the principle of the selections of press freedoms, expression and opinion, the desirability of advancing the peoples on the road to peace, the association takes for the objectives of the former Media and communication skills youth and women. Aina aims to broaden its field of action to many countries.