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: Manner, Grafelfing, 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.