NEW YORK — As part of New York City’s Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues and Ideas, New York University’s Department of Photography and Imaging is sponsoring an exhibition of 30 color prints taken by Iraqi civilians in the months of April and May titled “Photographs by Iraqi Civilians, 2004.”
The photographs were made as part of an initiative by the Daylight Community Arts Foundation to distribute disposable cameras to Iraqi civilians to show another point of view unavailable to the foreign press. They were asked to photograph people and scenes to communicate back to the people of the U.S., whose army is currently occupying their country.
“This is an opportunity to show the American public what you want them to see,” these amateur photographers were told. For example, one poor family is photographed near a garbage dump. The man, Sadiq, had named his daughter, born the day U.S. troops entered Baghdad, Americas, meant to represent hope and freedom.
Others are less sanguine: one photographs burials in Fallujah, where much of the anti-U.S. violence has taken place. Others photograph scenes in a barbershop, a school, on the street, sometimes eliciting smiles from people who are normally shown as surly, even hostile, when depicted by foreign journalists.
This exhibition is an attempt to show a small slice of the life lived by people who, for a variety of reasons, are still not very well known or understood by the U.S. more than a year after hostilities were said to have ended. Now, when it is too dangerous for most U.S. photographers to walk around and photograph, these photographs by Iraqi civilians are timely and revealing. The show will remain on view through Oct. 10 at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. through 7 p.m. weekdays, and noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Admission is free. For further information call (212) 998-1930, e-mailor visit www.nyu.edu/tisch/photo.
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