2004, Summer
Daylight Magazine - Issue 2

Magazine front cover
Daylight Magazine
The current situation in Iraq is the central issue within contemporary international politics. If Iraq becomes a successful democracy, will a positive example be set for other politically unstable Middle Eastern nations? While initial U.S. justification for aggression against Iraq was the search for "weapons of mass destruction", it has yet to be legitimized. However, Saddam Hussein's regime was undoubtedly despotic and reinforced a number of dichotomies within the Iraqi populace. As Iraq's election-day fast approaches, the Iraqi public will soon be expected to represent their own political views in the voting booth. Perhaps, Iraqis will finally be in a position to pick up the pieces of their confused society, rebuild war-damaged mosques, rectify deep-rooted human rights abuses, and find closure where necessary. In this issue of Daylight Magazine, Iraq is presented from a number of perspectives. As individuals living far from the front lines, images we foreigners see on television and in newspapers define our perception of the current situation in Iraq. For many of us, this is an armchair war consisting of images released by corporate-controlled media conglomerates and government censors with undeniable agendas. This issue of Daylight presents the work of photographers who have spent time in Iraq working to present their audience with an individual perspective of the region. What a photographer chooses to capture reflects a personal interest or desire to share a very specific moment with the universal spectrum of potential viewers. Susan Meiselas' images of the Kurdish mass graves in southern Iraq came to light ten years ago when the burial sites were exposed to the world. These images have gained contemporary relevance as they are once again being reproduced and reviewed as evidence in the current legal case against Saddam Hussein. Sean Hemmerle's photographs concentrate on landscapes of war-damaged Baghdad. These, and other, images will be on display in June 2004 at the Open Source International gallery in Manhattan. What is the human story of Iraq? What would Iraqi citizens choose to show us, the foreign public of a country occupying their homeland? Inspired by these questions, our organization sent ten disposable cameras to correspondents in Iraq. These cameras were distributed to Iraqi civilians with the hopes of offering individuals an opportunity to share imagery of their lives with a foreign audience. Each person who received a camera was offered these words: "This is an opportunity to show the American public what you want them to see". As the situation in Iraq continues to unfold, we are left with an increasing number of questions. When, and if, the fighting ceases, how will imagery continue to affect and inform the world perspective of Iraq?
 
-The Editors
 
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