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| Jamal Panjweny, from Iraq is Flying, (2006-10) |
Jamal Penjweny: Saddam is Here is at Ikon until
21 April 2014.
Jamal Penjweny is an Iraqi-Kurdish photographer
and film-maker who has produced remarkable work with very limited resources -
supporting himself by working as a shepherd and running a café.
This exhibition comprises 3 series of photographs and 2 impressive and
affecting films which, I believe, were made using a mobile 'phone.
Saddam is Here comprises images of ordinary Iraqi people, each
holding a life-size picture of Saddam Hussein’s face in front of their own. As Penjweny says, “Saddam is here. Iraqi society
cannot forget him even after his death because some of us still love him and
the rest are still afraid of him ... His shadow is still following Iraqi
society everywhere.”
Panjweny was born during the Iran‑Iraq conflict in
1981: "War has always
been part of my life... Through my photos I try to erase the idea of war." In Iraq is Flying (2006–2010) he does just that: Panjweny got his subjects to 'leap for
joy' and created a (literally) uplifting collective portrait of ordinary people displaying innocent joy.
Personally, I found the most intiguing and disturbing set of photographs
to be Without Soul, in which a red line is drawn across the neck of
every living person and creature in the photographs. Panjweny says "As a
child I would often draw human figures, landscapes, animals and tanks… But at
home I was told that it is not a right thing to make images of living creatures
as it is a work of God, not of the human being. It is so because the one who
gives the shape of the being is obliged to give it a soul in the next life.
However, by drawing a line against the neck of the represented one can announce
to God that he invalidates the image and is not claiming a position of the
creator." For me, however, the images simply spoke
powerfully of cruel and arbitrary execution and the innocent victims of war.
Photographs can sometimes give up all their information too quickly; the
films, here, were, I thought, more powerful. One documents a market stall
recycling Kalashnikovs which, as Laura Cumming puts it, "dangle like dead
chickens from butchers' hooks". Another Life (2010) "is a film
of young men smuggling alcohol between Iran and Iraq... [it] was made with a mobile phone and some
superlative editing. Saddle-sore, stinking of horses, scarred from the bullets
of roving border guards, exhausted but desperate to make a living and feed
their families, the smugglers burn the crates to keep warm at night. One young
man holds up a can of Amstel: 'For this I am shot at?'" (Laura Cumming.)
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Saddam is Here (2009-10) |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Saddam is Here (2009-10) |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Iraq is Flying, (2006-10) |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Iraq is Flying, (2006-10) |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Iraq is Flying, (2006-10) |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Without Soul |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Without Soul |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Without Soul |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Without Soul |
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| Jamal Panjweny, from Without Soul |
