jan 1, 1965 - Exhibition Latif in Berlin Later one about Berlin at the Gulbenkian Art Center in Baghdad.

Description:

I wanted to introduce life in Iraq to the Europeans. The images represented all aspects of life in Iraq, faces from Iraq. I wanted to show Iraq’s human richness, as a place that had ethnic and religious diversity. I think I succeeded in transmitting this to the German people, who didn’t know much about Iraq.

There were about eighty photos. The show was appreciated, both as a subject of interest and as an artistic exhibition. I spoke in Arabic at the opening, and Munir Bashir’s music was played. I was also part of the B Photo group exhibition, a show organised in East Berlin in 1965. The idea then came up that I should take photos of the GDR for a similar exhibition in Baghdad – of selected places such as hospitals and factories – and I refused. I wanted the freedom to photograph life as I saw it, and that’s what happened. I took roughly eighty images.

One was of a traffic conductor running traffic on a very empty street! I found that curious; it summarised the Communist culture. The exhibition was at the Gulbenkian Art Center in Baghdad.