Iraq’s youngest photographer reflects
Qamar Hashim is an 8-year-old Iraqi photographer. He tours famous streets to picture Baghdadis with his single camera and is the youngest Iraqi photographer to win several local awards, according to the Iraqi Society Photographic (ISP).
Below, Qamar responds to a series of questions.
When did you take your first photograph and what did it show?
I do not remember exactly the first picture but I had been mimicking my father since I was 4 or 5 years-old and started to take pictures of the Tigris river, the gulls, birds, old houses and heritage places.
Why do you think photography is important?
Iraq’s slide to nowhere
Iraqi photographer Thaier al-Sudani answers questions on the nine year war and the pull out of U.S. troops.
Do you remember the day the U.S. launched air strikes?
I remember that day well. As the U.S. military jets bombed Baghdad, I was on the roof watching. We all thought that Iraq would be away from the war and violence after ousting Saddam and that Iraq would be among the top countries in the Middle East, due to its natural resources.
Describe your life under Saddam’s regime?
Life was normal. I studied design at the Arts Academy in Baghdad. Life was much safer than it is now.
How did you get into photography?
Just one question I have with bad boys!! Is this all will give them peace in the evening?
The future of Iraq
By Shannon Stapleton
When asked, “What do you see for the future of Iraq now that the United States military is leaving the country ?”, 12-year-old student Kharar Haider replied, “I don’t think we will have more problems and it is better than when Saddam was here. We have no heating or light in school. I don’t think that is going to get better.”
Upon arriving in Baghdad on Dec. 1st of 2011 for my first time in Iraq, the question that I couldn’t get out of my mind as we made our way through a maze of military checkpoints was “What will be the future of Iraq after we leave?” If security was this tense now, I could not imagine what was going to happen after the U.S. troops finally pulled out of this war-torn country.
Thoughts of a new sectarian war among the various factions involved in a power struggle over the government dominated my outlook on the future of Iraq. The threat of suicide bombings, mortar attacks or kidnappings for Iraq’s people created a sense of paranoia that I couldn’t possibly imagine living with on a daily basis. I was eventually going to be leaving the country on a military embed. The Iraqis who told me about their hopes for the future would stay behind.
When asked, “What do you see for the future of Iraq now that the United States military is leaving the country?”, fishmonger Saad Moslem replied, “Iraq is more stable now. I hope everything is going to be fine. All depends on God. In my neighborhood there is no electricity, no water. We have to buy water to drink. Hopefully nothing will happen.”
So I decided in my daily work to ask that same question of the people who were going to be part of this moment in history:
“What will be the future of Iraq after the Americans leave?”
Most of the interviewed people say there is no water and electricity.
The question I have is, was there water and electricity available to them before the US invasion?
This war was called the US$3 Trillion War which may not have achieved the US Neocon – Zionist goal.
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The Wall
Mashalla Qamar …Rabna yihmeek wa yuhufthek
May God Bless and protect you…
I have been into photography since I was 17 and next to you I feel am a dwarf next to a giant…Keep the greaworkt