Moises Saman: Iraq's Final Resting Places

Photo  Moises Saman/NYTimes-All Rights Reserved A compelling photo essay titled Iraq's Final Resting Places by Moises Saman appeared in The New York Time's web edition. Probably as a sort of commemoration for the so-called official end of conflict in Iraq, the photo essay documents the graves and tombs of the thousands of unknown Iraqis killed since the invasion of 2003. The Iraqi Interior Ministry estimates that 72,124 were killed since 2003, while at the morgue, it's estimated that at least 100,000 have yet to be identified. Other estimates differ in their calculations, but some reach over 1 million Iraqi civilian deaths since 2003. Coincidentally,...

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Jon Vidar: The Tiziano Project

The Tiziano Project presents the journalistic efforts and personal accounts of Iraqi citizens living in the Kurdish north, along with stories produced by their professional multimedia journalism mentors.An extremely well-made multimedia project, it includes stories such as those on the Yazidis, nomadic mountain-dwelling Kurds, a pigeon keeper, a muezzin, a klash maker, and many more. The mentoring team consist of Jon Vidar (one of the talented instructors at the Istanbul Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, and a freelance photographer who developed self-assigned projects spanning six continents, including work in Iraqi Kurdistan, Southeast Turkey,...

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Ashley Gilbertson: Bedrooms of the Fallen

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has featured The Shrine Down The Hall: Bedrooms of America's Young War Dead, a powerful photo essay in slideshow format by photographer Ashey Gilbertson (VII Network), which looks at some of the empty bedrooms of the over 5000 U.S. military personnel killed in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Dexter Filkins starts his accompanying article with the words "Just kids". The ages of these military fallen range from 19 to 25...indeed, just kids.George McGovern in 1969 speaking about Vietnam said:"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in".Now of course, it's also women who die in...

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Ashley Gilbertson: Bedrooms of the Fallen

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has featured The Shrine Down The Hall: Bedrooms of America's Young War Dead, a powerful photo essay in slideshow format by photographer Ashey Gilbertson (VII Network), which looks at some of the empty bedrooms of the over 5000 U.S. military personnel killed in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. Dexter Filkins starts his accompanying article with the words "Just kids". The ages of these military fallen range from 19 to 25...indeed, just kids.George McGovern in 1969 speaking about Vietnam said:"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in".Now of course, it's also women who die in...

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Teru Kuwayama: How To Not Get Shot

Photo  Teru Kuwayama-All Rights Reserved A veteran documentary photographer, Teru Kuwayama has made more than 15 trips to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, traveling both independently, and as an embedded reporter with US and NATO military forces, as well as Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian armed forces. In 2009 he received the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor award for his work in Pakistan, and a fellowship from the South Asian Journalists Association. He is a 2009-2010 Knight Fellow at Stanford University, a contributor to Time, Newsweek and Outside magazines, and a contract photographer for Central Asia Institute, a non-profit organization...

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WP: Female Circumcision in Kurdistan

Photo © Andrea Bruce/Washington PostHere's a photo reportage by Andrea Bruce for The Washington Post titled Sheelan's Circumcision, which makes me cringe for two reasons. The first reason is obvious; female genital cutting (FGC) is an abhorrent and an utterly repellent practice. The graphic photographs show us how Sheelan, a seven-year-old girl is taken by her mother to be circumcised in Kurdish Iraq, where more than 60 percent of women have undergone the traditional and controversial procedure. It is much beyond controversial...it's a horrible tradition and no efforts should be spared in trying to eradicate it. It's perhaps through photo essays...

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The Um Kulthum Cafe (Baghdad)

Andrea Bruce/The Washington Post-All Rights ReservedThe Washington Post features a short slideshow of photographs taken in the Um Kulthum Cafe in Baghdad by Andrea Bruce. Unfortunately, the number (and choice) of photographs is insufficient to give the viewers the "feel" of an Arab cafe...the raucous atmosphere, the sense of family between the regular patrons, the sound of dominoes and backgammon, the smoky atmosphere, etc. However, the most grievous omission made by whoever produced the slideshow is in not clarifying that Um Kulthum, the nightingale of the Arab world, was Egyptian. As it stands, the impression is left that since the Iraqi cafe...

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Censoring War Photographers

Photograph © Zoriah Miller-All Rights ReservedThe New York Times features a slideshow and accompanying article on the increasing control (aka censorship) by the American military on graphic images from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both slideshow and article make reference to Zoriah Miller, the photographer who posted images of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack in Iraq on his Web site. Miller was subsequently forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of the country. (For background on this, I've posted a Zoriah Miller slideshow on TTP just a week ago). The thrust of the article is that photographers increasingly say the...

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Zoriah: Disembedded

Photo District News (PDN) features an article on Zoriah Miller, a freelance photographer who published pictures of dead U.S. Marines on his blog, which he claims has led him to be ejected from his U.S. military embed in Iraq. Click above to view an audio slideshow of Zoriah's photographs.Zoriah told PDN: "They embedded a war photographer, and when I took a photo of war, they disembedded me. It's as if it's okay to take pictures of them handing lollipops to kids on the street and providing medical care, but photographing the actual war is unacceptable."PDN's full article is H...

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Max Becherer: The Mandaeans of Iraq

Photograph © Max Becherer-All Rights ReservedHere's an interesting photo essay by photographer Max Becherer on the Mandaeans in Iraq. The Mandaeans are a small religious sect in Southern Iraq and Iran, who espouse an ancient belief resembling that of Gnosticism and that of the Parsis. They are also known as Christians of St. John, among other names. The customs of Mandaeans indicate early Christian, and possibly pre-Christian, origin. Their system of astrology resembles those of ancient Babylonia and the cults of the Magi. Although some of their practices were influenced by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, they reject all three. St. John the...

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