Photos of Iraq Document Lost Way of Life

A new exhibit that opened at the Peabody Museum Wednesday offers snapshots not only of a fascinating way of life now gone, but also of a method of racial anthropology just as extinct.

Entitled “Field Photography: The Marsh Arabs of Iraq,” the exhibit offers a unique glimpse into the lives of Iraq’s Marsh Arabs or Ma’dan tribes that until the mid-1980s lived in mud huts on southern Iraq’s rich Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

The exhibit brings together 34 prints from physical anthropologist Henry Field’s survey of the ancient Near East. It combines these prints with excerpts from Field’s own publications.

Together, the prints and texts tell the story of a nearly extinct way of life, documented by the racially charged scientific approach to anthropology that dominated the pre-World War II period.

The exhibit’s curator, Omar Al-Dewachi, says his interest was first sparked in the subject by the discovery of data sheets filled with physical descriptions of these Marsh Arabs. They drew him to explore Field’s publications, including the Anthropology of Iraq, which provide a context for the collection of Field’s photos donated to the Peabody in 1953.

When Field and his team of two anthropologists, a translator and a photographer first embarked on their four-and-a-half month expedition, the goal was scientific: to record the physical and cultural characteristics of the inhabitants of what was considered to be the biblical Garden of Eden.

In order to embark on such a journey, Field first needed the permission of the Sheikh Falih al-Saihud, the paramount sheikh of a number of tribes in the southeastern part of the al-Hawiza Marsh. His photo is central in the exhibit, portraying the 85-year-old, six foot tall respected leader as an integrative part of the culture of the Ma’dan.

Other images highlight women in intricate dress or men in canoes, fishing or making reed mats. Together with landscape shots of the pristine marshland, the exhibit offers a glimpse into the lives of a lost culture.

Al-Dewachi makes a point of connecting such images to Field’s memoirs, giving them context as well as Field’s (a foreigner’s) impressions. Indeed, the images tell a story of a foreigner learning about this ancient culture.

Coming to America as an Iraqi native, Al-Dewachi was surprised at how the West romanticized the lifestyle of the Marsh Arabs as a sort of “primitive Venice.” “In Iraq, ‘Ma’dan’ was a cultural slur, implying ignorance, etc.” he says. “In medical school, the Marshlands were described as an area of disease, full of malaria.”

The degradation of these tribes was completed during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein, after quelling a rebellion of the Ma’dan (who are Shia Muslims), ordered the construction of a large canal and several dams that in effect were forced to abandon their homes and their culture.

After the fall of Hussein’s regime, the Marsh Arabs tore down the dams. The restoration of the marshlands has since sparked international commitments to restore the marsh ecosystem and economy.

However, Al-Dewachi is quick to point out, concern for the plight of the Ma’dan “comes and goes in news and in the consciousness of the people.”

Grouped together as the “Wild Boar Hunt,” a number of the photos on display illustrate an anecdote of Field’s hunting with the Sheikh for a wild boar, an animal considered “unclean” to Muslims.

Field took the first shot and the Sheikh took the second, fatal shot. “A foreigner and sheikh killing a magnificent specimen together” is how Field sums up his experience. When Field asked for the boar as a specimen, however, the sheikh’s discomfort suggested a larger cultural divide between these two men.

The images on display also recall the larger context of physical anthropology, especially anthropometry, the study of human body measurements. As Peabody Director of External Relations Pamela Gerardi explains, the exhibit highlights the photos as anthropology, not art. They were taken in pre-Franz Boas era, before modern anthropology’s focus on cultural rather than race as the defining factor in the differences among peoples.

There are startling images of Field’s makeshift lab on the Marshlands, taking measurements and physical samples. Overall, Field collected 221 profiles of men, describing their physical characteristics and recording anthropological measurements (dimensions of the body, facial and skill ratios) in statistical tables.

Field’s anthropometric undertaking illustrates the basic fear of the foreigner. Al-Dewachi stresses the difficulty Field might have had in finding willing individuals. “At first there is curiosity, but then it becomes anger at this foreigner,” he says. He emphasizes the importance of Field’s Iraqi translator, who also acted as a liaison between the two peoples.

Having lived in America both before and after 9/11, Al-Dewachi says he has seen firsthand the changing nature of such consciousness. Photographed, fingerprinted and screened by the Immigration Naturalization Service, Al-Dewachi speaks of this exhibit as a way to mediate this form of racial science and profiling. “Racial science still exists and is alive and present,” he says, “only today it is undertaken in the name of security and not science.”

The scientific element of Field’s journey resonates in the modern world, where one is aware of the dangers of racial classification and stereotyping—techniques employed in the name of science and physical anthropology. Field’s conclusions, though, were more in line with Boas’ findings: the distinguishing features of Ma’dan and non-Ma’dan peoples are not biological, but cultural.

For Al-Dewachi, the images in his first exhibit tell a fascinating story of both a lost culture and an early form of anthropology. This duality will be echoed in subsequent displays. Gerardi hopes to showcase a series of four exhibits a year, each displaying part of the Peabody’s huge photographic collection. The collection could even be said to trace the history of anthropology itself, as the Peabody is one of the oldest anthropological museums in the world.

“Field Photography: The Marsh Arabs of Iraq, 1934” will be on display through Feb. 28, 2005 at Harvard’s Peabody Museum.