Leave and Let Us Go

I became acutely aware that what a foreigner is able to capture through an image does not always embody the lived reality of locals. Several days into an embed with Iraqi Special Forces, a way of bridging that divide became evident when a soldier shared the pictures on his phone with me: his wife, his children, the people he had killed, his university graduation day, his wedding. Similar interactions like this happened so often during my time there, I began asking to download these images in order to create an archive of the personal accounts of people who wanted their stories witnessed, not just represented. In total I have collected roughly 350,000 images and videos from over fifty different people across the country. I also began to scan the family photo albums of many of the people I met to create a multi-generational view of Iraq, dating as far back as the 1920s. These photos were supplemented with interviews, found objects, newspaper and magazine clippings, along with images recovered from found cell phones of suspected ISIS militants and those who lived under their rule.'