Penn Museum creates a newly digitized photographs file to document the history of Yazidi

Almost 300 photographs taken in northern Iraq during the 1930s and stored in the Penn Museum have been digitized and shared with the Yazidi community, which is indigenous in that region, forming what researchers describe as the first visual archive of the group.

The images, which show weddings, sanctuaries, festivals and the daily life of the Yazidi indigenous people, were originally taken by Penn Archaeologist Ephraim Avigdor Speiser and his team during the excavations in the Mesopotamian sites of Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa. Many of the photographs had not been cataloged or published until Marc Marín Webb, Ph.D. candidate in history and archeology of Mesopotamia, rediscovered them in 2022.

“The Penn Museum colleagues knew that I was watching Lalish’s story, and then this colleague sent me the photo,” Webb said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. “We went to see the photos and found those 300 photos.

The photographic study of the Penn Museum scanned the collection in high resolution, cataloging negative fragile and impressions that had remained stored for decades.

“The Penn Museum was very generous when scanning everything and sharing it in record time,” Webb said. “300 photos in just a few months.”

In April, the photographs were exhibited in Iraq through the Sersal project, a collaboration between Penn, the Goethe Library Institute of the University of Victoria and the Music School of the Mirzo de Sinjar Foundation.

Webb described the collaboration with the Mirzo Foundation as the “most important” part of the project.

“Having musicians composing songs from Yazidí history, looking at this photograph was a beautiful dialogue between oral stories and visual memory,” he said.

Reman Salo, a second year student of the university who was born and grew up in northern Iraq, recalled his reaction when he met the photographs for the first time in an interview with the PD.

“Actually, it was incredible, because as someone from the community, it was fantastic to see the Penn museum paying attention and worrying about those things,” said Salo. “I was very happy, sincerely, I was very proud.”

According to Salo, the photographs research process was also emotional.

“At home, our parents and grandparents have told stories about our history. Knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation,” he said. “But when you put a camera or an image in that voice, you can really see it. At least I saw photographs of my hometown 100 years ago, which was incredibly surprising.”

The photographs appeared a decade after the campaign of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham in 2014 in Sinjar, that the United Nations have classified as genocide.

Webb said that the photographs, although originally created for archaeological documentation, have assumed a new role connecting the past and the present.

He emphasized that the decision of the Penn Museum to digitize and share the images reflects broader efforts to support the preservation of heritage in Iraq, where much of the Yazidi culture has been the subject of destruction.

“It helps to call … attention not so much to genocide, but about what happens after genocide,” Webb said. “The problem of places like Sinjar is that it is still destroyed … there are still unleashed artifacts (and) common graves that have not been open.”

For salo, photographs expand the possibilities of how Yazidí life can be represented and have the potential to generate more awareness among indigenous communities. .

“It is a great thing that reflects the history of the community that has existed for thousands of years, years of civilization, culture and resilience,” he said. “We are not only known for violence against us, but also … for happy moments.”

Webb acknowledged that local populations in Iraq have expressed a similar desire for memory during the exhibitions.

“Those images allow you to have empathy with people, because they are getting married, because they are celebrating in the sanctuaries,” he said.

He also described his hope of continuing the project beyond his doctorate. dissertation.

“The idea would be to generate the right file, the first visual file of the community,” Webb said. “Maybe we can find a way to collaborate with different files … It is a project around memory and I am very interested.”

Waiting for the approval of museums, webb said, there are also plans to take exposure to Philadelphia.