Paolo Woods (born August 18, 1970) is a Dutch–Canadian photographer, director, curator and teacher. He mainly works on long-term projects combining photography with investigative journalism. He is a contributing photographer for National Geographic and his work is regularly published worldwide in magazines such as Time,[1]Le Monde, Geo, Internazionale [fr], Newsweek, etc.[citation needed]
His work has been shown in solo exhibitions in France,[2] the United States,[3] Germany,[4] Switzerland,[5] China,[6]Haiti,[7] Italy,[8] Belgium,[9] the Netherlands,[10] and Spain, as well as numerous group shows around the world.[citation needed]
Paolo Woods grew up in Italy in a Dutch-Canadian family. From 1991 to 2000 he ran a black and white professional photo lab and a photography gallery in Florence named Print. In 1999 he turned to documentary photography and went to Iran to document the reforms President Khatami was trying to implement. There he met the writer and journalist Serge Michel [fr]. From 2000 to 2002, together with Michel, Woods travelled through twelve countries – among them the United States, Iraq, Angola, Kazakhstan and Russia – following the route of oil production and trade, conducting a behind-the-scenes investigation of the industry.[13] In 2002 and 2004 they worked in Afghanistan and Iraq, producing a detailed reportage on the westerners' debacle there that eventually became the book American Chaos. In the same years, Woods, Michel and Claude Baechtold [fr] founded Riverboom, a collective and publisher, later joined by Gabriele Galimberti and Edoardo Delille.[14]
In 2007 and 2008 Woods worked across Africa documenting the birth of "Chinafrica",[a] the spectacular rise of the Chinese who were then massively investing in Africa and had changed the geopolitical order[16] (see Africa–China economic relations). The resulting book, coauthored with Serge Michel and Michel Beuret, has been translated to eleven languages[citation needed] and has been acclaimed[according to whom?] as the most thorough investigation of the phenomenon, and as an example of art and documentary photography united.[citation needed] It sold more than 40,000 copies in France alone.[17]
In 2010 Woods completed the work Marche sur mes yeux, an intimate portrait of Iran, hoping to overcome the stereotyped vision of the country and show the complexity of its identities. The photographs were widely published and exhibited in galleries and festivals such as the Rencontres d'Arles in France[2] and Festival Images Vevey [fr] in Switzerland.[18]
In 2010 Woods moved to Haiti. For four years he worked there on the project State, which recounts the islanders' experience and describes the dynamics at work in all the developing countries: international organisations versus local government, civil society versus executive power, private versus public money. The project grew three-dimensional in Haiti including a book, coauthored with a prize-winning[19] Swiss journalist Arnaud Robert [fr], that was translated into Haitian Creole, an exhibition outside Faculté d'Ethnologie (Université d'État d'Haïti) of Port-au-Prince and the outdoor installations across the city realised with the support of local artists.[7][20] The first exhibition of the project in Europe was hosted at the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne.[5]
In 2012 he received his second World Press Photo award in the Daily Life section for his reportage on the importance of the radio network in Haiti.[21]
In an interview with the New York Times, Woods said about his work:
Photojournalists tend to divide the world into good and bad. You constantly find those two elements that we so clearly think define our vision of the world. But things are a lot more mixed. There are not just bad guys and good guys. That is what is interesting to me, to get into the nuances and make images that are not answers, but raise more questions.[22]
In 2013 Woods and Robert published another book set in Haiti, Pèpè.[23]
In 2014, in collaboration with an Italian photographer, Gabriele Galimberti, Woods completed The Heavens, an investigation into tax havens.[1] This premiered with an exhibition at Rencontres d'Arles in 2015[24] and has toured worldwide to both critic and public acclaim.[25] The photobook was chosen as among the best of 2015 by Martin Parr,[26] by three curators for LensCulture,[27] and by Holly Stuart Hughes for Photo District News.[28]
In 2021 in collaboration with writer Arnaud Robert he released the project HAPPY PILLS, a 5-year investigation in the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and consumers that questions whether happiness can be prescribed. For HAPPY PILLS he followed consumers in the United States, Switzerland, Niger, Israel, Peru, Portugal, India and Italy. The project takes the form of a book published by Delpire,[29] an exhibition in Switzerland[30] and a film to be released in 2022.[31]
Marche sur mes yeux: Portrait de l'Iran aujourd'hui. Paris: Grasset, 2010. ISBN978-2246757610. Text in French.
Puedes pisar mis ojos: Un retrato del Irán actual. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2011. ISBN9788420651255. Translation into Spanish.
Land des Lachens: Land der Tränen: Die vielen Gesichter des Iran: Ein Porträt. Munich: Riemann, 2011. ISBN9783570501313. Translation into German.
Translation into Persian, freely downloadable as a PDF file.[32][33][b]
Paolo Woods (photographs), Arnaud Robert [fr] (text). State.
État. Arles: Éd. Photosynthèses; Lausanne: Musée de l'Élysée, 2013. ISBN9782363980076. Text in French.
State. Arles: Éd. Photosynthèses; Lausanne: Musée de l'Élysée, 2013. ISBN9782883500990. Translation into English.
Leta. [Haiti]: Edisyon Fokal, 2014. ISBN9789997041609. Translation into Haitian Creole.
Paolo Woods, Ben Depp, Josué Azor (photographs); Arnaud Robert (text). Pèpè. [Vevey]: Riverboom; Lausanne: Musée de l’Elysée, 2013. ISBN978-2883501003.
Paolo Woods, Gabriele Galimberti. The Heavens. With an essay by Nicholas Shaxson.
Les paradis: Rapport annuel. Paris: Delpire, 2015. ISBN9782851072757. Text in French.
The Heavens: Annual Report. Southport: Dewi Lewis, 2015. ISBN978-1905928125. Translation into English.
Arnaud Robert, Paolo Woods. Happy Pills, le bonheur en pilules. Paris: Delpire, 2021. ISBN9791095821366. Text in French.
