World-famous photographer: Khojaly - eternally bleeding wound in people’s memory

World-famous photographer Reza Deghati has said that he worked on many topics, visited various countries, prepared reports from the conflict zones in the world as part of his profession.

“However, I was greatly shocked by the tragedy in Khojaly, and I still feel this pain. Despite 31 years have passed since that time, even today I cannot forget that tragedy. This theme is endless in reports, photographs. Khojaly is an eternally bleeding wound in our memory. Truly, Khojaly is the tragedy of the century,” Deghati said in an exclusive interview with Azertag.

“I witnessed the Khojaly genocide. Since that time, I have been doing my best to bring to the world the bitter truth about this tragedy as if I was one of the inhabitants of Khojaly. Over the past forty years, 360 of my exhibitions have been opened, more than 50 of them are dedicated to the Khojaly tragedy. My goal is to bring this tragedy to the world. As a photographer, I saw that people were treated unfairly, I reflected their suffering in photographs. All this shocked me. Bringing people’s suffering to the world is my lifelong duty,” he added.

Deghati noted that he had worked for the website to thoroughly inform the world about the Khojaly tragedy.

The website www.Khojalywitness.org  was prepared in partnership with initiator of “Justice for Khojaly!” international educational campaign, Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva. The website includes photographs taken in Khojaly and Aghdam in 1992 and their stories. There are also articles published in many reputable international media outlets. The website also has publications by US journalist and writer Thomas Goltz, journalist and cameraman Chingiz Mustafayev, French photographer and film director Frederic Lengan, Lithuanian photojournalist Richardas Lapaidis.

The website has been prepared in Azerbaijani, French, English and Russian to bring information about Khojaly to numerous readers. The website is planned to operate in ten languages in the future.

One of the main goals of creating the website is to bring to the attention of users the stories of victims and witnesses of Khojaly, as well as to assist them in finding relatives recognised in photographs.