Iraq | Perspectives 9780822395003

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I ra q  |  Pe r s pec t i ves

S e l e c t e d b y Wi l l i a m E g g l e s t o n t o w i n t h e Center for Documentary Studies/ H o n i c k m a n Fi r s t B o o k Pr i z e i n P h o t o g r a p h y

I r a q  |  Pe r s pe c ti v e s Photographs by Benjamin Lowy

A CDS Book P u b l i s h e d b y D u k e U n i v e r s i t y Pr e s s in association with the Center for Documentary Studies D u rh a m , N o r t h C a r o l i n a

These images were practically asking to be in a book together— e v e r y t h i n g a b o u t t h e m — t h e c o n c e p t i o n , t h e s u b j e c t , t h e f a c t t h a t w e ’ r e s t i l l a t w a r, t h e w a y t h e p i c t u r e s w e r e t a k e n . B e n j a m i n’ s w o r k i s a n o p p o r t u n i t y to see as an American soldier sees when in Iraq—nobody I know of has ever shown that, especially through night vision goggles. — Wi l l i a m E g g l e s t o n

To f r i e n d s a n d c o l l e a g u e s w h o l o s t t h e i r l i v e s i n t h e l i n e o f d u t y, because you felt it your mission to bear witness, b e c a u s e o f y o u r i n h e r e n t n e e d t o s e e f o r y o u r s e l f, b e c a u s e y o u k n e w y o u c o u l d w i t h s t a n d t h e h o r r o r, because somewhere inside your soul you wanted to feel alive amidst it all. for all those reasons, and more, we the living are forever grateful.

Iraq  |  Pers p ec tiv es I : Windows

Iraq  |  Pers p ec tiv es I I : Night Vision

Ir a q  |  Pers p ect ives I: Win dows In July 2005, I was being driven from an assignment—an endeavor that took two

spending most of my time going on various missions in armored Humvees. My

cars and four heavily armed Iraqi guards—when my mother called. She asked

only view of Iraq was through inches-thick bulletproof windows.

me if I had the chance to go out with Iraqis, to wander through Baghdad. I told

I wondered if Iraqis saw me through these windows. I never knew the answer

her that this scenario was near to impossible, if not dangerous for someone like

to that, but I knew that they saw the monstrous convoys of Humvees coming

me: tall, white, and bald. I explained that I couldn’t go anywhere without armed

through their neighborhoods. Some stared, some jeered, some cheered, some

protection; that Iraq was a land of blast walls and barbed wire fences. Her

just went about their business, indifferent to the tons of destructive force

response was one of incredulousness. She had never seen any photographs or

driving by. This vantage on the Iraqi street is one rarely seen by the American

news reports illustrating what I described. I made my first image of a concrete

public, but it is the most common point of view for U.S. soldiers.

blast wall through the window of my armored car that day.

These images are not intimate—they reflect a distant and detached

“Iraq | Perspectives I” grew immediately out of that conversation and as a

perspective on a country that is so empty, so desolate, on a situation so dire.

response to what I felt was both the general apathy and the inability of people in

The windows represent a barrier that impedes dialogue. The pictures illustrate

the United States to comprehend life during the Iraq War. Confronted by a level

a fragment of Iraqi daily life taken by a transient passenger in a Humvee; yet

of violence so high that walking on the streets to photograph was tantamount

they are a window to a world where work, play, tension, grief, survival, and

to suicidal behavior, I found myself confined to working with American soldiers,

everything in between is as familiar as the events of our own lives.

Iraq  |  Perspect ives II: Nig h t Vision During my embeds I was able to use U.S. militar y-issue night vision goggles,

to conventional news imagery. I hope that viewers are compelled to question

firmly attached to my camera by means of duct tape, dental floss, and

the meaning of these devastating events and their long-lasting effects on

occasionally, chewing gum, to make images that reveal a more menacing

Americans and Iraqis.

nocturnal version of Iraq’s abandoned streets, cowering civilians, and anxious soldiers. As with the window photographs, these night vision images were made through a barrier, a technology that allows only a few to pierce the darkness of the Iraqi night. Unlike “Windows,” however, this perspective is more intimate. As soldiers weave through the houses and bedrooms of civilians during the nighttime military raids, they encounter the faces of the suspect and the innocent. The urgency and anxiety among these soldiers were as palpable as the terror in the faces of the Iraqi civilians. With these two series, I aimed to create an “aesthetic bridge” that circumvented the usual depiction of the war, and surmounted public apathy

More often than not, the rest of Iraq, like the rest of us, are left in the dark, but I hope that these images provide the viewer with momentary illumination about the fear and desperation that is war. —Benjamin Lowy All of the photographs in this book were taken from 2003 to 2008.

Acknowledg ment s This project and book would never have taken shape without the help and

To Brian Storm, James Colburn, and former Time editors Michele Stephenson,

guidance of numerous friends and colleagues, but it is my wife, Marvi Lacar,

MaryAnne Golon, and Alice Gabriner for taking a chance and giving me my first

who deserves the most thanks. She is my love, my muse, my spellcheck; most

assignments in Iraq. I would also like to thank The New York Times and The New York

things in my life would never be accomplished without her.

Times Magazine, for whom I was working when most of these images were made.

To my mother, Deborah, who dragged me to art museums throughout my life, who opened my creative mind—this project was inspired by her curiosity.

A special thanks goes to Jamie Wellford of Newsweek and Mia Diehl of Fortune for their mentorship and friendship over the years.

I also want to thank, for their guidance and friendship, and in no particular

I also must thank Michael Gordon of The New York Times, who spent hours

order: Ken Cedeno, James Bareham, James Pomerantz, Yoni Brook, Logan

riding in Humvees with me across Iraq, and who wrote many of the articles that

Mock-Bunting, Michael Brown, Emily Schiffer, Lauren Steel, Peter van Agtmael,

accompanied my images. He was an invaluable companion through some of my

Christoph Bangert, Johan Spanner, Ron Haviv, Christopher Morris, Jared

worst experiences of war.

Moossy, Michael Kamber, Doug Menuez, Leslie Dela-Vega, Shaul Schwarz, Rick Loomis, Thibault Jeanson, David Laidler, and Stephen Farrell. For showing their support and championing this work: Kira Pollack, Kathy Ryan, Aidan Sullivan, Stephen Mayes, Elisabeth Biondi, Christina Cahill, Nick Papadopoulos, Alina Grosman, Annick Shen, Dominique Viger, Nancy Jo Johnson, Scott Thode, Whitney Johnson, Stokes Young, James Estrin, Quito Ziegler and everyone at the Open Society Institute, Darren Ching, Debra Klomp Ching, David Friend, Chiara Oggioni Tiepolo, Dietmar Liz-Lepiorz, Ken Lieberman, Stacey Clarkson, Elie Domit, the Houston Center for Photography, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Modern.

Thanks also to Lynne Honickman at the Honickman Foundation and Tom Rankin at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, who direct the institutions that sponsor the First Book Prize, and to the staff at Duke University Press, the publisher of the book. To designer Yolanda Cuomo and editor Alexa Dilworth for helping me finally pull this book together. To my best friend and fellow photographer, David Holloway, who kept me shooting and kept me sane. And of course, to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, who sacrifice to serve. I hope my images, in some way, reflect their experiences.

Benjamin Lowy is a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 and began his career in 2003 when he was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to cover the Iraq War. Lowy’s career as a conflict photographer has also taken him to Haiti, Darfur, and Afghanistan, among other places. Lowy’s photographs have appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, Stern, National Geographic Adventure, Men’s Journal, and Rolling Stone, and his work has been recognized by World Press Photo, POYi, Photo District News (PDN’s 30), Critical Mass, American Photography, and Foam Magazine. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco MOMA, Tate Modern, Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls, Noorderlicht Photofestival, Battlespace, the Empty Quarter, and the Houston Center for Photography, among others. Lowy’s photographs from Iraq were chosen from over two hundred entries as the fifth winner of the biennial CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography

The Honickman Foundation is dedicated to the support of projects that promote the arts, education, health, and social change. Embodied in this commitment is a fundamental belief that creativity enriches contemporary society, because the arts are powerful tools for enlightenment, equity, and empowerment: Hence, this focus to help expand, nourish, and center attention on contemporary photography. It is the Foundation’s aim to stimulate America’s energetic photocollecting universe into the full realization of photography’s rich accomplishment and potential, both as an art form and as a tool for social change.

The Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography This biennial prize offers publication of a book of photography, a $3,000

competition for his black-and-white photographs of the surreal intersection of

award, and inclusion in a website devoted to presenting the work of winners

suburbia and desert in California, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. Smith’s book,

of the prize. Each year a significant and innovative artist, curator, or writer in

The Weather and a Place to Live: Photographs of the Suburban West, was

photography is chosen to judge the prize and write an introduction to the winning

published in 2005.

book. The prize is open to American photographers who use their cameras

Robert Frank, one of America’s most influential photographers, judged the

for creative exploration, whether it be of places, people, or communities; of

third biennial competition and chose Danny Wilcox Frazier to win the prize

the natural or social world; of beauty at large or the lack of it; of objective or

because of his “passionate photographs without sentimentality. . . . his

subjective realities. The prize will honor work that is visually compelling, that

work reaches out: let me tell your story, it is important.” Frazier’s Driftless:

bears witness, and that has integrity of purpose.

Photographs from Iowa was published in 2007.

Renowned photographer Robert Adams, the prize’s inaugural judge, selected

Celebrated photographer Mary Ellen Mark judged the fourth competition

Kansas-based photographer Larry Schwarm to win the first prize competition

in 2008 and selected Jennette Williams as the winner for her “original and

for his series of color images capturing the dramatic prairie fires that take place

beautifully rendered” photographs of women in Hungarian and Turkish bath

in his native state each spring. Schwarm’s On Fire, first published in 2003, is

houses that “transcend simple representation to speak powerfully about

in its second printing.

women’s own private sense of identity and beauty.” The Bathers was published

Maria Morris Hambourg, founding curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Photographs, picked Steven B. Smith to win the second biennial

in 2009.

Photographs, text © 2011 by Benjamin Lowy Text © 2011 by William Eggleston All rights reserved The paper for this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lowy, Benjamin, 1979– Iraq—perspectives / Benjamin Lowy. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-8223-5166-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Iraq War, 2003—Pictorial works. 2. United States—Armed Forces—Iraq—Pictorial works. 3. War photography—Iraq. I. Title. DS79.762L69 2011 956.7044’3—dc23 2011027114 Duke University Press 905 W Main Street Durham, NC 27701-2076 dukeupress.edu CDS Books, published by the Center for Documentary Studies, are works of creative exploration by writers and photographers who convey new ways of seeing and understanding human experience in all its diversity—books that tell stories, challenge our assumptions, awaken our social conscience, and connect life, learning, and art.

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