Eye Level in Iraq

Eye Level in Iraq: Photographs by Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson, currently on view at the de Young Museum, presents the work of two photojournalists who have been photographing Iraq from 2002, before Operation Iraqi Freedom, through 2011. The exhibition consists of sixty-four photographs and two large vitrines containing press and personal ephemera related to the photojournalists’ time in Iraq. Alford and Anderson reveal a perspective outside of the U.S. military’s embedded journalist program, and moments of the mundane—a late-night game of dominoes at a Baghdad teahouse (Teahouse, Baghdad, Iraq, November 6, 2002) or a bored teenager selling rugs on a busy sidewalk (Baghdad, Iraq, November 3, 2002)—are coupled with dramatic moments of loss and terror that accompany life within a war.

A photograph by Alford, titled Shoala, Iraq, March 28, 2003, shows the haunting image of three brothers agonizing over the tiny body of their younger sister in a morgue. Via wall text, Alford explains that the young girl was killed when a U.S. missile, part of the “shock and awe” bombing campaign, landed in a busy market, killing more than fifty people. Below it, another photograph of the same incident, also titled Shoala, Iraq, March 28, 2003, shows a woman tenderly preparing the young body for burial. These are not heroic images of Saddam Hussein’s statue toppling down. These photographs show a family suffering from hostilities beyond their control. Viewing these private moments feels intrusive, but the family insisted that Alford witness and share their trauma. This desire conveys their desperation to give some purpose to a senseless loss of life.

Thorne Anderson. Baghdad, Iraq, November 3, 2002, 2002; digital inkjet print; 13 x 19 in. Courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. © Thorne Anderson.

The photographs are not a reminder of the conflict in Iraq. They are a realization. The immersive viewing experience serves to reveal how foreign policy objectives impact human existence. The museum setting for photojournalistic works is a gift of space and physical presence, allowing for measured thought. The true impact of the political and personal contexts of war comes from the extensive wall labels, which make clear the deep consequences of the depicted events. In reading, a viewer shifts from a casual observer to an interpreter of the American war effort. Alford and Anderson’s photographs share personal stories bounded by conflict, lifting the veil of our fast-paced media coverage to expose a lived reality.

Eye Level in Iraq: Photographs by Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson is on view at the de Young Museum, in San Francisco, through June 16, 2013.

Leila Grothe is a graduate student at the California College of the Arts.