Review • Sean Smith: Iraq, 10 Years On

Sean Smith – Iraq, 10 Years on; A Review by Laura Parkinson

I have decided to review the Sean Smith exhibition focusing on his work he captured in Iraq during the past 10 years. A lot of his work looked at the people who lived in Iraq and the soldiers of America and Britain at work, protecting, or not protecting, the members of the community that lived there.

This is one of the most thought provoking images that I looked at whilst viewing the exhibition. It was soon after Saddam Hussain dies, the statue was pulled down from the centre of Iraq, and ending the frightening rule he had. You can tell by the urgency in the soldiers eyes that what is happening has to happen fast, however, there is also a sense of happiness and hope that the war will soon be over. Smith's work captures raw emotion right from the heart of the war, uncensored truths of what happens in an everyday environment.

A lot of the photographs were not nice to look at but showed the real side of the Iraq war, not the filtered news we see on the television. The photographs contain blood and gore, wounds and women crying. Smith did not seem emphatic to the situation and some people did not understand why. However, Smith is one of the few photojournalists who covers war whose work I can look at without feel a sense of disgust and anger towards war and I think he handles to topic well within his practice.