Financial Times: Through the Lens – Latif Al Ani’s peerless photographs of ancient Iraq
The exhibition heralds the arrival of a generation of Iraqi artists — mostly living abroad — who, in paying homage to the man known as “the father of Iraqi photography”, also reclaim their ancestral civilisation. Nadine Hattom, for example, was born in Baghdad, grew up in Australia and Abu Dhabi, and lives in Berlin. She plays a similar game to Al Ani’s, manipulating figures in a landscape, though she does it digitally instead of issuing instructions like “Stand there” and “Look here”. Unable to travel to Anbar Province, she instead sifted through public domain photos of US military operations there, then edited out the soldiers and left only their shadows. She is performing the same trick he did, serenading her homeland through the ghostly traces of yet another foreign invasion.
Ariella Budick