Achraf Baznani

Achraf Baznani (born 1 January 1979) is a Moroccan artist, filmmaker and photographer. He was born in Marrakesh.

Biography 
Baznani got started in photography by chance. He received a Kodak Ektra Compact 250 camera for his birthday as a teen. Baznani is self-taught and has never taken photography classes. He has made several short films and documentaries. These include "Walk" in 2006 and "The Forgotten" in 2007. "The Immigrant" in 2007 received several national and international awards.

Baznani is best known for being the first artist in the Arab world to publish a photo-book based on surreal imagery. Both books, Through My Lens and Inside My dreams, are surreal. Baznani places himself within his photographs of everyday objects, scenes and amusing situations.

His works were featured in various magazines worldwide like PicsArt, National Geographic, Mambo, Photo+, Amateur Photographer, Fotografe Melhor, Digital Photo magazine.

During 2014, he completed his "52 Project ", a personal mission which he committed to taking a picture every week in a row for a year.

Claim of plagiarism 
On April 29th, 2015, Joel Robinson, a Canadian photographer, accused Achraf Baznani of plagiarism. His evidence was a long article, published both on his website and petapixel.com, that the Moroccan photographer used his work in a way that amounted to plagiarism.

Although Robinson did not mention Baznani by name, the nature of the case was said by Robinson to be as follows. Robinson's originals all had a photo of himself in the middle of a graphic design of some kind. In each case, Baznani removed Robinson's image and replaced it with one of himself.

Awards 
Achraf Baznani has won these awards:

Cinema 
 2006: Best Director: national educational film festival in Casablanca, Morocco. 
 2007: Best Director: national festival of the education thread in Casablanca, Morocco. 
 2008: Best Director: national festival of amateur short film Settat, Morocco.
 2008: Best Director: national festival of short film creators in Casablanca, Morocco. 
 2008: Best Director: the short film festival in Nador, Morocco. 
 2009: Best Director: national Educational Film Festival in Fes, Morocco. 
 2009: Jury Prize at the International Festival of Short and Documentary Films in Casablanca, Morocco. 
 2009: First prize in the short film festival in the Arab League.

Photography 
 2015: Best in the show in Park Art Fair International
 2015: Merit in Sydney International Exhibition of Photography
 2015: 1st Prize in B2zone art contest in Switzerland 
 2016: Honorable mention in Park Art Fair International  
 2016: 1st Place Winner – Golden Ribbon in Notindoor photography magazine contest 
 2016: Golden Orchid Grand Prize
 2016: International Prize Colosseo, Roma, Italy

Artistic career

Exhibitions 

2015 "Colour brust", PH21 Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
 2015: Park Art Fair International 2015, Triberg, Germany
 2015: Gallery Globe, Adisson, Texas, USA
 2015: Digital Private Exhibition Louvre Museum, Paris, France 
 2015: My Small World, Solo Exhibition, Marrakesh, Morocco
 2016: International Surrealism Now, Coimbra, Portugal 
 2016: Park Art Fair International 2016, Triberg, Germany 
 2016: Männer, Gräfelfing, Germany 
 2016: Inside my Dreams, Solo Exhibition, Rabat, Morocco

Art books 
 2014: Through my lens, Art book, .
 2014: Inside my dreams, Art book, .

Magazine covers 
 PH magazine, Canada, issue 42, ISSN 1924-9424.
 FOTOdigital, Portugal, issue 17
 Magazine, US, issue 2, 
 PicsArt, US, issue 15
 Mambo, Spain, special edition December 2014
 One Shoot magazine, Mexico, issue 27
 Zarah magazine, US, October 2014
 Art Reveal Magazine, Issue 5, Finland, June 2015.
 Cultura Errante, Mexico, October 2015
 Artinzene, Issue 4, New Zealand, November 2015
 Knack magazine, Issue 31
 Convex Photography Magazine - February 2016, India

Movies 
 2006: Marche 
 2007: Emigrant 
 2009: Eyes

References

Other websites 

 Official site 
 IMDb 
 PH Magazine , Issue 42, pp 36–39 
 Achraf Baznani: Surreal, Inventive Digital Photographs

1979 births
Living people
Filmmakers
People from Marrakesh
Moroccan writers
Photographers