Monthly Photos　August 2010

Photos taken by ILCAA staff and associates are posted here once a month; most of them are taken during their field research in Asia and Africa.

(The copyright belongs to the photographers.)

Kurdish Girl on the border

At a glance, on that moment the girl's eyes caught my heart and I was pushing the shutter. It was in a temporary refugee camp on the border of Iraq and the girl was a Kurd fleeing along with her parents.

I had neither been to Iraq, nor seen Kurdish people until then, so it was the first contact for me to the both. After the war on Iraq in 2003 hundreds of thousands of people were compelled to leave Iraq, and there was tension over the border. This did not allow me to take snap shots frankly in the camp, however the attraction of the blue eyes superseded everything. Staring at me straightforwardly, they seemed to represent innocence and purity in the midst of plague.

Several years have passed and I have no hint where she has gone after that. Most probably she had left the camp with her family to a third country supported by UNHCR. Only thing I can do is to wish she is happy in her new home with doors wide open for every chance in her future.

FEB 2005
In a refugee camp on the border of Iraq
Photograph by Aiko NISHIKIDA

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