Ed Kashi's photographic perspective on Iraqi Kurdistan

Beautiful photographs -many published in National Geographic! I recommend visiting Media Storm to see this clip.... Note that the many of these are Hawler/Erbil: kids riding a donkey-pulled cart, shoppers seen in mirrors facing the citadel, the taxis at Kaiseri bazaar. And some of the other images could be anywhere in Kurdistan: car searches at a checkpoint, a big family feast, workers in a factory, a picnic, a shopping center, an amusement park (which I think is in Dohuk). I especially like the private photos of Talabani smoking a big cigar in some place which is clearly not public... and of him with Barzani in one of those assemblies I will never be important enough to attend (thankfully).

In any case, these images look like the Kurdistan I live in (and not the images published by those who would have you think that Hawler looks like Dubai - pictures of shiny, but incomplete complexes with names like "American Village" and Dream City").

Now Playing on MediaStorm

Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan is an expansive look into the daily lives of the Kurdish people of northern Iraq. These images provide an alternative perspective on a changing culture, one different from the destruction and discord that dominates so much media coverage of the region.

Here are policemen seated on the floor, eating lunch and laughing, old men taking care of their fields and young girls celebrating at a suburban birthday party.

There is also hardship and tribulation, to be sure; the Iraqi Kurds endured generations of brutality under Saddam Hussein. His genocidal campaigns cost close to 200,000 lives. But as Iraqi Kurdistan documents, the region is mostly peaceful today. The people enjoy more autonomy and women's rights continue to grow stronger.

Documented by photojournalist Ed Kashi during a seven-week stay in 2005, the photographs of Iraqi Kurdistan are presented in flipbook-style animation; gradual changes between still images simulate motion. The thousands of images that comprise this project are as striking as they are bountiful. Watch it now.