In April Stephanie Sinclair donned an abaya, the black head scarf and cloak worn by women in Muslim regions, to take pictures of members of Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Madhi forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City district for Time magazine. She told insurgents she was French–“You can’t tell them you’re American at this point,” she says–and didn’t have any major problems.
Twenty-five of Sinclair’s photographs from Iraq’s front lines are featured in the Peace Museum exhibit “Occupation,” which opens tonight, Friday, October 22, and runs through the end of November. Whether focusing on the lives and deaths of civilians, militants, or soldiers, her work gives a view of the war not often seen in the American media. “I’m trying to show pictures of Iraqis so you can identify with their struggle,” she says.
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Days later, without the permission or protection of the U.S. military, Sinclair and Goering drove across the border into southern Iraq, steering clear of checkpoints and Iraqi combatants and eventually making it to Baghdad. Aiming to put a human face on collateral damage, Sinclair turned her camera on stories that Pentagon-spun reporters largely bypassed: civilian deaths and injuries, street chaos, devastated families, and, amid it all, men, women, and children–especially children–trying to lead normal lives in a war zone.
Sinclair has attended many grieving ceremonies and funerals in Iraq, and won’t photograph if the families ask her not to. “I’m pretty careful not to cause any more pain,” she says. “I can’t really do a good job unless I feel like they want me there or the family invited me.” She’s spent time with Iraqis who were tortured by Saddam, with war orphans housed in prisons, with Afghani women in a burn ward recovering from self-immolation. She says that being a woman has worked to her advantage: “Generally, people are more disarmed. Men don’t know what to do with me so they let me go anywhere.”
Unlike Sinclair’s earlier Iraq work, the photographs on view at the Peace Museum mostly focus on the conflict. “There’s not a lot of daily-life stuff,” she says. “That’s because there’s not a lot of daily life, not a lot of normal things. It’s not a very normal place right now. Everyone’s staying home. Everyone’s scared. Going to work is dangerous.”
Where: Peace Museum, 100 N. Central Park
