Tag Archive "iraq"

Black and white and relevant – Battle of Algiers

Something about Matt Suib and Nadia Hironaka’s “Whiteout” at Locks Gallery tripped my memory of another desert/militarist/high contrast black and white moving picture, The Battle of Algiers. (Note: Whiteout really doesn’t bear strong resemblance to the 1966 movie but nevertheless the sand, the b&w…I guess I’m suggestible.  See a few images of Whiteout at flickr, and more on the Locks show in Weekly Update next Wednesday).

Treasures of Ancient Iraq: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery at the Penn Museum

Iraq has been front-page news for years and the Holy Crescent is central to Jewish and Christian scripture, so it’s surprising that some of the greatest treasures excavated there have been sitting in Philadelphia since the early 20th Century and been relatively ignored.  The British Museum’s spectacular goat of lapis lazuli caught in a thicket of gold has a twin at the Penn Museum.

Iraq conversation without Jeremy Deller

I pretended I was a tourist as I approached the rusty hulk of an exploded car parked on a flatbed towed by an RV. They were parked in front of the National Constitution Center, across from Independence Mall. The RV was labeled with a web site, www.conversationsaboutiraq.org, and “It is What it is.”