Geert Van Kesteren: Baghdad Calling

Geert van Kesteren BAGHDAD CALLING

EXCERPTS

SELECTED BOOKS

Rotterdam: Episode Publishers, 2008

[In Iraq,] van Kesteren noticed that refugees use their mobile phones as family albums. He also came across the gruesome fact that for criminals and murderers the mobile phone is an important tool, as in the case where a kidnapper uses the mobile of the victim to contact the family or where the coroner uses the mobile of the dead person to inform the bereaved family of their loss. Against this background, van Kesteren decided to let the pictures of ordinary, nonprofessional photographers tell the story this time.

With the assistance of a small team he collected many hundreds of photos. Iraqi refugees in Jordan asked friends and acquaintances for more material. In Amsterdam the team established contact with people inside and outside Iraq via blogs and Facebook, and these also supplied photos. The wealth of material they amassed was astounding.

. . . The task was further complicated when it turned out that photos in the albums were often from official press agencies, though this made it clear that Iraqi civilians have made the mobile phone into the modern equivalent of the newspaper. They use it to inform one another of private and public events in the theatre of war. . . .

—from Brigitte Lardinois’s essay