César Dezfuli

César Dezfuli, born in 1991 in Madrid, Spain, in a context of cultural mixture given his Spanish-Iranian origins, is a journalist and documentary photographer whose work often explores themes related to migration, identity, and human rights.

Self-taught in photography and having learned his trade as a journalist in various new rooms, Dezfuli’s assignments and personal projects have taken him to document different realities world wide, from covering the elections in Kenya, Rwanda and Kosovo, to documenting families which have gone against China’s one-child policy. Since 2015, his focus has been on the migrant crisis at the borders of Europe, with aspecial focus on the Central Mediterranean migration route.

In 2016, Dezfuli began working on his most renowned project, “Passengers,” with which he aims to question the visual representation of migration.

He is a frequent contributor to De Volkskrant and Le Monde newspapers, while his work has been published in various international media such as The Guardian, Time, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Aljazeera or the BBC. He has received several awards and grants including the World Press Photo, the Pictures of the Year International, the Sony World Photography Awards, the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize or the Catchlight Fellowship, among others.

Part of individual or collective exhibitions worldwide, his work has been exhibited at: the National Portrait Gallery, United Kingdom; the Museum of Sydney, Australia; European Center for the Arts, Germany; French Institute of Malaga, Spain; Addis Foto Fest, Ethiopia; or Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, United State.