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Art, Music & Culture
Regarding the Pain of Others: The Photography of Farah Nosh

Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Iraq

Feb 15, 2007


What's absent from Farah Nosh's series of images taken in Iraq in early 2006 is just as important as what she shows us. Included in the exhibition Inside Out currently showing at the Gage Gallery at Chicago's Roosevelt University, Nosh's series is comprised of stark black-and-white portraits of Iraqi amputees, all of them injured as a result of the war.

In her deceptively simple images, viewers are first confronted with what is obviously absent and then made to associate more abstract notions of "missing." Nosh's subjects stand or sit in sparely decorated rooms, most of them looking at the camera as they would in a studio portrait. Amputated limbs are obviously missing. But there are lots of subtle reminders in her photographs that lead viewers towards a better understanding of the tremendous loss being suffered by the Iraqi people as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation.

Nosh's images are a powerful reminder of the burden of Iraq's living. As Nosh explained in a lecture during the exhibition opening, if 26,000 Iraqis died in one year alone, one can only imagine how many more were injured. Her portraits allow us to access, however briefly, the lives of some of these who will forever by physically compromised -- if not otherwise -- by the unthinkable catastrophe of the war.

Amputee Muhammed Ali Abdel Hadi is shown lying prone on a bed. The caption quotes him explaining, "I was ready to die. But you live for your children." Above the bed hang portraits of his late father and uncle. The viewer is left with the impression of a multi-generational loss, and it is not a far leap to wonder what awaits Iraq's youngest inhabitants.

But perhaps most striking is the psychological space that surrounds the individuals in Nosh's images. Dramatically lit and photographed in black and white, the portrait subjects are posed in sparely decorated rooms in such a way that we are forced to confront their reality.

These Iraqis are physically broken but perhaps the heavier burden for them is not knowing the fate of one's society. The strongest image in the series is that of 42-year-old Duyar Sai Fehan, who stands with his arm bandaged around his amputated elbow, supported by a cane as his young daughter Shama holds his prosthetic leg. Injured when his civilian vehicle was run over by an American military one, he survived while two other passengers died. "You know a worm how it walks the earth little by little? That's me, little by little," he tells of how he gets through the day.

Pictured standing in his kitchen with his younger brother lurking in the background, the caption accompanying teenaged Saif Yusef Hanoun informs us that he is resentful of his brother's legs and so takes his anger out on him. Likewise for 17-year-old Haidar Samir Ahmad, who lost his arm to an American bullet, and is photographed standing in a sitting room with his little sister behind him. He is "sick with anger," according to his mother who is paraphrased in the caption. So jealous is he of his brother's two arms, they have not spoken in two years.


In her lecture at the opening of the exhibition, Nosh emphasized the psychological impact of the war on Iraqis, or as she puts it, 22 million people "living with post-traumatic stress disorder." While she was staying with her Iraqi relatives in Baghdad, she noticed the increased tension and fighting in her family's home as the increasing violence imposed new pressures and stresses on its members.

She told of her young cousins, whose education has been put on hold because it was simply too unsafe to bring them to school every day. In a slide show of images she took while staying with her Baghdad family, equally as compelling as those hanging on the gallery wall, she showed a picture of two young cousins sitting on a couch with a vacant look in their eyes. They've "lost [their] adolescence, locked in a home day after day," Nosh explained.

Nosh, who had been covering Iraq between 2002 and 2004, "when things just started going downward," was working out of the Baghdad journalist compound. However, in early 2006, she was driven to return to Iraq upon seeing the images of injured American troops returning home. "We started to see constant images of American [troops] coming home brutally injured" but not seeing the Iraqi side, Nosh said. "I was just craving to see the Iraqi side of it."

As it had become increasingly difficult for international journalists to seek out human interest stories such as the fate of Iraq's injured, Nosh realized that because of her Iraqi heritage she was the best person to document this consequence of the war. She added that "being a woman helps incredibly ... I don't think these men would have let me into their home if I was a man."

Nosh was staying with family who lived around the corner from where American journalist Jill Carrol was kidnapped. Her uncle saw the body of Carrol's murdered driver, where it lay uncovered for some time because people were too scared to pick it up, though finally somebody went out to cover it with a sheet.


The conflict hit close to home - literally. She explained that an Iraqi army checkpoint was erected in front of her family's home for days, much to the consternation of her aunt who was worried about insurgent attacks on the post. Indeed, an attack did occur, and Nosh caught on camera the scene of her family peeking through the window, their concerned faces reflected in a mirror, watching the Iraqi army pick up their dead.

She also showed a photograph of her uncle Ahdam, who died two weeks after the image was taken, sleeping on a couch in the family living room. Ahdam suffered a heart attack but was unable to seek medical treatment because of the curfew imposed on the city, and emergency vehicles were unable to reach him. He died in the room in which he was photographed.

Nosh also included in her slide show images she took this summer in Lebanon. She was on assignment in Syria when Israel began its bombardments, and after an assignment that took her to Beirut, Nosh traveled to the south of Lebanon to document the destruction there. Present for the aftermath of the Qana massacre, Nosh related how emergency workers were pulling the bodies of child after child from the rubble, whom were then "piled in the ambulances." Nosh forced herself to spend time in an ambulance, taking pictures of the children who were haphazardly placed on top of each other.

In a question and answer session after her lecture, Nosh was asked whether Iraqis were aware of the anti-war movement in the U.S. "I don't think it makes a difference" whether or not they are aware, was her answer. Their lives completely without personal security, Nosh explained, "I think everyone thinks of leaving." Well-off Iraqis who already possessed passports before the war are leaving in droves, she said, and those without passports and who can afford to do so wait overnight in a line to get one.

Her own security was a matter of "constant negotiation." However, Nosh was determined to find her subjects and found that people were willing to be photographed. One man whom she really wanted to photograph declined, saying that it was too unsafe for her to come to where he lived. Speaking to her as though she were a member of his family, he finally revealed where he lived, which turned out to be just around the corner from Nosh's family. "It's so hard to say 'no' to anybody when they want to come into your home," Nosh said, explaining how ashamed the man was to turn down Nosh's request. But most were willing to be put in front of the camera, and "it was a big deal to them for someone to come from the outside" and record their story.


Asked how it was working as a journalist under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Nosh replied, "At the time we were so frustrated at not being able to move around on our own without an Iraqi intelligence officer ... but at least we were able to walk on the streets." She told of her prescient cousin, who admonished his younger brother for celebrating with a white flag the arrival of American troops in the Baghdad streets. "'You wait,'" he told his brother, "'there will be a day when we wish he was back.'"

Central to Nosh's images are a sense of injustice. Her subjects, especially the young ones, express frustration about the fate that has been unfairly dealt to them. Nosh explained that she was attending the first day of a journalism class at university on Sept. 11 2001. Her class watched the news coverage all day long. "Nobody was saying 'Osama'" at the time, she explained. "A year and a half later, Iraqis [were] paying the price." Nosh was at the Iraqi Ministry of Information while Colin Powell was addressing the United Nations Security Council, making the case for an attack on Iraq. Western journalists and Iraqis alike laughed in reaction to what they saw him say on the television.

As an Iraqi-Canadian, Nosh has a strong personal interest in the fate of her family's country. However, she recognizes her role as a spectator. "I'm the one who gets to leave," she explained. "I get to walk into it when I want and I get to leave when I want, and they don't get to do that."


Inside Out: Through April 27, 2007
Gage Gallery, Roosevelt University
18 S. Michigan Avenue
312.341.6458


Maureen Clare Murphy is Arts, Music and Culture Editor of The Electronic Intifada


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