Guillem Valle

I was born in Barcelona in 1983 and became interested in documentary photography at the age of 14 when I travelled to Sarajevo on an art student exchange program. At age of 16 I started to work as a freelance photographer for local newspapers.

My first international story was about the anti-globalization movement’s response and demonstrations during the G8 summit of 2001 in Genoa.

While still a student at the Institut d'Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya, I travelled to Palestine on two occasions between 2001 and 2004, to photograph the Palestinian Intifada.

I started to work with El País in 2003, all the while maintaining a personal agenda, developing a body of documentary work on socials issues here in Spain.

Since 2006 I have gone to Lebanon to cover such themes as: the war between Israel and Shiite militia Hezbollah and the conflict between Fatah Al-Islam and the Lebanese army in Northern Lebanon. These images mark the beginning of my collaboration with Sipa Press New York as a distributed photographer.

In the course of 2008 I have covered Kosovo independence, as well as beginning a body of work on the PKK in Northern Iraq and the Uygur minority of the Xinjiang region of North-western China.

Over the years I have combined my work as a photographer with the practice of Aikido and playing the drums in a rock band.