CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/11/2017

Remarkable midcentury photos from the Father of Iraqi Photography

“The past is mine, not the future. That is for others,” Latif Al Ani is quoted in the remarkable new monograph from Hatje Cantz. “The impact of the images will be more important in the future, as they show a vanished world … It is counterintuitive; things are meant to progress forwards, not backwards. I had a strange incident around 2004, when I went to a kiosk to buy a newspaper. The man told me it had sold out because of a calendar supplement of photographs. I asked him what it was, and he said, I don’t know, some photographs of Baghdad by a man called Ani. I told him, I was the photographer. He was so surprised he kissed me. He asked if Baghdad really was like that? He couldn’t believe it was the same city he lived in. He said: ‘It was so ordered and clean. Why are we like this today?’” Featured image is “Shopping in Baghdad” (1964).