The images, which show weddings, shrines, festivals and the daily lives of indigenous Yazidis, were originally taken by Penn Ephraim archaeologist Avigdor Speiser and his team during excavations at 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 Mesopotamian history and archeology, rediscovered them in 2022.
“Colleagues at the Penn Museum knew I was looking at Lalish’s story, and then this colleague sent me the photo,” Webb said in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. “We went to look at the photos and found those 300 photos.
The Penn Museum’s photography studio scanned the collection in high resolution, cataloging fragile negatives and prints that had been in storage for decades.
“The Penn Museum was very generous to scan everything and share 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 Institute of Libraries at the University of Victoria, and the Mirzo Foundation School of Music in Sinjar.
Webb described the collaboration with the Mirzo Foundation as the “most important” part of the project.
“By having musicians composing songs from Yazidi history, looking at this photograph was a beautiful dialogue between oral stories and visual memory,” he said.
Reman Salo, a college sophomore who was born and raised in northern Iraq, recalled his reaction when he first encountered the photographs in an interview with the PD.
“It was actually amazing, because as someone from the community, it was great to see the Penn Museum paying attention and caring about those things,” Salo said. “I was very happy, honestly, I was very proud.”
According to Salo, the process of researching the photographs was also emotional.
“At home, our parents and grandparents have told stories about our history. Knowledge is passed down from generation to generation,” he said. “But when you put a camera or an image on that voice, you can really see it. At least I saw pictures of my hometown from 100 years ago, which was incredibly surprising.”
The photographs emerged a decade after the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham’s 2014 campaign in Sinjar, which the United Nations has classified as genocide.
Webb said the photographs, although originally created for archaeological documentation, have taken on a new role connecting the past and present.
He emphasized that the Penn Museum’s decision to digitize and share the images reflects broader efforts to support heritage preservation in Iraq, where much of the Yazidi culture has been subject to destruction.
“It helps draw… attention not so much to the genocide, but to what happens after the genocide,” Webb said. “The problem with places like Sinjar is that it is still destroyed… there are still unexploded ordnance (and) mass graves that have not been opened.”
For Salo, photographs expand the possibilities of how Yazidi life can be represented and have the potential to generate more awareness among indigenous communities. .
“It’s 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 remembrance during the exhibitions.
“Those images allow you to have empathy with the people, because they are getting married, because they are celebrating in the sanctuaries,” he said.
He also described his hope to continue the project beyond his PhD. dissertation.
“The idea would be to generate the right archive, the first visual archive of the community,” Webb said. “Maybe we can find a way to collaborate with different archives… it’s a project around memory and I’m very interested.”
Pending approval from the museums, Webb said, plans are also underway to bring an exhibit to Philadelphia.