Jessica Murray
Director
Arab Documentary Photography Program
Barcelona, Spain
Jessica Murray was born in England in 1972. She grew up between Kenya, England and the United States. She received a BA in Iberian Studies from Skidmore College, NY. In 1997 she moved to New York City where she worked, first for the Center for Cuban Studies and then for Magnum Photos. At the same time she worked with different grassroots advocacy projects including a three-year commitment to Project Hip Hop (Highways into the Past, History Organising and Power) a program developed by the ACLU of MA. In 2001 and 2002 she helped coordinate a series of photography workshops in Havana, Cuba, for the Maine Photographic Workshops and in 2002 she founded her own workshop program in Brooklyn, the Williamsburg Workshops. In 2004 she co-founded Al-liquindoi in Spain, which she continues to direct until today.
Al-liquindoi is a Spanish cultural association which provides training and support to documentary photographers in Spain and abroad. Through intensive workshops and trainings Al-liquindoi encourages photographers to explore and expand on forms of visual storytelling, helps develop independent voices in the media, and lays the foundation for network building among visual storytellers in the world.
Al-liquindoi also curates, develops, and produces content driven projects in a variety of mediums, aimed to engage audiences on human rights, social justice, and other critical issues. Examples of these are the "Crónica21 Archive" , the book "Europa: An Illustrated Introduction to Europe for Migrants and Refugees" published and distributed in 2016, and the graphic novel "Un regalo para Kushbu: Historias que cruzan fronteras" published by Astiberri in 2017.
