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November 30, 2003 |
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Iraqi Passport Photos
FOUND by Cary Norton
in Bagdad, Iraq
Rummaging around one quiet afternoon at Baghdad International Airport (I'm a photographer for a company that's working in Iraq), I went into an abandoned store and, naturally, started going through some of the drawers. Underneath a stack of year-old pita bread (very, very hard), I stumbled across a small stack of passport photos.
There are two things strange about them. One, all the photos are of women. And two, every face has been scribbled on with a red ink pen. Very strange.
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
it is not really strange. they are all women becuase it was a horny passport-photo worker man who collected them. then he lost his job/was killed/the airport was overtaken by illegal intruders and they are all scratched out because a more hardline islamist found them and according to his fucked up interpretation of god's will it is unacceptable to show photographs of living things. or maybe he wasn't even that strict, maybe he was just the mild sort and believes that women should not show bare skin. either way, god prefers girls with their faces scratched out.
And it's a pity, too, because those are some lovely faces that might never be seen.
wow, this is so creepy and sad...
strange how you can tell her scratched out the girl on the bottom's face for longer.. he musn't have liked her much...
Maybe it's because her hair is too messy for him? ;-)
Or maybe it's because he liked her the most?
I left pita bread in my fridge and it didnt get hard, it molded!!! a lot, and had a smiley face of mold on it
A terrorist was trying to determine which out of many old passport photos to use in their fake ID in order to get past security. After careful consideration, comparing herself to each one, she systematically scratched out the ones that didn't suit her, and finally settled on one. She cut that one out, used it in her fake passport, and along with her story that her group had devised, she boarded the plane, and left the country.....
if you look closer you'll notice that these are all pictures of the same woman at different stages in her life. it is actually her that did the scribbling. (self-esteem issues)
I hope this is NOT what this is, but when I was in Iraq, there were reports of Shia rape squads that abducted women, took their passports, and took turns raping them and eventually killed them. A lot of photos like these were found in thier "torture chambers".
I have to agree with TR... My initial instinct on this one was that they were all (or she was, if you believe all the pictures to be of the same woman) murdered. Although it does seem strange that a hit list would consist only of passport photos, it does seem likely that if captured or kidnapped, a woman may be forced to surrender all identification and the photos were then taken from there. So sad if true......
im thinking that its numerous pictures of one girl, and those are disguises she used. she had to cross them out so she would remember not to look the same after each crime.
hm... it reminds me of "the ring," actually.
what i find more disturbing than the scribbled out photographs are the racist, ignorant and utterly ridiculous comments left by tim and steve.
They are obviously not the same women. Just look at the first two pictures. It's not so easy to see their lips, but they are completely differnt shapes. Not to mention the distance in betweeen their eyebrows.
I completely agree with ajc.
Those of you that see people of Middle Eastern decent as potential terrorists and not beautiful, culturally rich individuals are lowly and undeserving of the gift of freedom.
Amen, ajc. What kind of a country do we live in? This is a pretty creppy find. Makes me wonder if the person was obsessed with these women? Or a serial killer? Their faces scratched out like that makes them seem like such victims. I hope they're all still alive and well today!
Funny, I thought it looked like something my 3 year old would do. I imagine these were unused/extra passport pictures left to be discarded by the photographer, who subsequently stapled them to a page and let their kid have at it with a red pen to stave off boredom while visiting the parent's workplace.
what i like about this is that it could mean anything, something sinister or something totally innocent or whatever. if i were creative enough i'd write a story about it. haha
it's definitely of the same woman & it's my guess she probably did it herself. i've seen girls scribble out pictures of themselves in old year books because they didn't like that particular picture of themselves. she was probably eliminating the ones she liked least so as to keep the ones she liked best.
I agree with some of the above comments. If the finder hadn't posted that these were specifically IRAQI pass port photos, I don't think people would be making the ignorant comments about the woman in the photograph being a potential terrorist or similar. i like the find, but the comment thread makes me sad. :/
Battie, you're saying these are all pictures of the same woman? Uhh..I don't think so. Try again.
The first and the fourth are definitely the same woman. other than that, i can't narrow down all the possibilities, creepy and otherwise, in this enigmatic find.
I think you have stumbled onto a murder case. The murderer one by one killed each of these women. The one on the bottom, whose face is most scratched out, must have been most hated/most brutally killed.
There is something tragically beautiful about the way this forces us to face the forgotten women of Iraq.
Yeah, I'm sure it was a serial killer. Jesus Christ. This isn't an American TV movie, you know.
Oh yeah, and Lorena, yes all people of Middle Eastern descent are "beautiful, culturally rich individuals". I think I'm going to be sick. You are unbelievably patronising.
Well, I'm almost positive that these women weren't all a subject to these horrible theories you all have come up with because I think I know one of those women. The woman I am thinking of matches up perfectly with the story [she moved from Iraq to America when she was 16 about 20 years ago] She looks exactly the same. I really hope it is her, because we know one woman is safe from all the guesses you've made.
Wow, some of you are coming up with some super creepy theories. Stop watching so much TV.
okay... seriously... loook closely, the photo on the far left and far right is most deffinetly the same person... all of the other photo's are taken at diffrent angles, or thier hair is diffrent or its too scratched out to tell but they deffinetly do have strong similarities... stop comeing up with these rediculous, absured theories
Maybe they're all sisters, and that's why they look similiar to each other. Some people think it's the same person and some people think they are different people. But I think they're sisters, that makes sense to me because they do look similiar.
I don't know why their faces are scratched out, but the theories written here are all very good. They all could potentially be true. Nobody will know unless they actually know all of these women.
Maybe it had something to do with their family, if they are indeed sisters. Maybe their parents were ashamed of them because they weren't following rules or religion, so they scratched out their faces because they no longer wanted to look at them.
they're very pretty; whoever they are.
No shit, "My name in My location." Sounds like Lorena has an obvious case of American Guilt Syndrome. It's totally idiotic to counter one extreme with the exact opposite extreme.
"All cops are sadistic Nazi murderers who get off on raping defenseless, wheelchair-bound old ladies!"
"No, all policemen and policewomen are kind and loving souls who take great pleasure in handing out teddy bears to babies and giving free birthday cake to everyone equally! They also nurse injured butterflies back to health in their free time!"
"The Police Nursing College was established in 1970 as the School of Nursing within the Surgeon-General's Office at the Royal Thai Police Headquarters."
It's one thing to find something, it's another to rummage through someone else's drawers and then post them publicly for others to use ignorant, rascist generalizations to come up with theories about what you've stolen.
Stolen?!! Yeah, AT, I'm sure Mr. Shopkeeper was going to be back any day now to collect his petrified pita and defaced passport lady pictures.
I wonder...do you think he drew on their faces with his own red pen? Or were they like that when he got them? I personally wouldn't go near pictures of ladies that some other guy had already used his red pen on.
I like the theories but I think they are farfetched.
I think the explanation is simple: These are passport photos. It was a passport photo shop. They usually make 2 copies of the photo, and use one for a passport and discard the other. The photographer probably drew on them so no one else could use them/steal them for fake passports. Easy.
But on to more murder theories...
It is ridiculous that, because these were found in Iraq, many of you (steve, for example) assume that the woman is a terrorist or a murderer. While it is valid to take the environment this woman is in into account (the way that TR did) why would you assume something about the woman based on the mere fact that she is of Middle Eastern decent? If these were scribbled-on passport photos of a blonde haired blue eyed woman found in Iraq, what would you assume? What if they were found in the United States?
The question is, why did the finder of the photos feel free to rummage in the drawers of a strange place?
In point of fact, I have often watched Egyptian TV via sattellite and they often put Vaseline on the camera lens if a female presenter is not wearing a headscarf etc. You can still see her face, just out of focus.
you all would be terribly eyewitnesses (except for Danielle). This is not the same woman.
Here in this moment- I'm having a really hard time believing you just happened to find a woman you know here and recognized her, despite the fact that she moved to Iraq and you haven't seen her for 15-20 years.
And there's probably a harmless explanation for this, but it freaks me out anyway.
I agree, the photos are not the same person. But possibly family members. I bet they moved away. Flew out of that very airport. Wonder where they all are? Canada maybe?
Wow, Roberta in Karpathos! I would just love to be on a Greek island right now. *sigh*
Meanwhile... I think some bored little kid happened to pick up a pen and scribbled on some photos that happened to be lying around. It seems to be an instinct to want to obliterate faces (look where the chewing gum always gets stuck on posters on the London Underground!). Nothing sinister.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that the red pens were a childs doings. But, after reading all of the comments, I think Junky's is the most plausible. The comments are fascinating. It's like a glass half empty/half full experiment.
Awesome find!
Now if anyone does not want to hear ridiculous, crazy theories, and/or gets upset when thinking of people rummaging through abandoned store's drawers...YOU ARE ON THE WRONG WEBSITE!
going by the stuff I was taught in art school about spacing etc. I'd say that they are not the same woman. The hairlines are different (of course, can't tell in the one lady wearing her Hajib.). The eyebrows all have slightly different shapes, some are closer to the eye from top to bottom, some are farther apart.
The red ink especially that one in the lower bottom right - makes me wonder if the faces were scribbled out as sort of a "Scarlet Letter" type thing, that the shopkeeper thought the women were whores? The moslim shopkeepers here in the USA treat me like I'm pond scum if I so much as accidentally touch their finger while I'm handing them my money or credit card to pay for my purchases (we have an arabic grocery store not far from the mosque in my town and I happen to like a lot of the food served in middle eastern restaurants in our town.)
msdrpepper...has it ever occured to you they're probably thinking that YOU think they're pond scum and are acting on the defensive? post 9/11 has made many of them feel that way.
Maybe the previous owner of these pictures had watched the tape from "The Ring" a few days before, hence the scribbled faces. The ink's not black though... maybe there wasn't a black pen available.
Hey, it's possible.
Tim is wrong. Islam does not prohibit photographs from containing images of living things. Its just that in Mosques, it is not allowed for images of living things to be used as decoration. Tim is probably mixing this up with the fact that in Islam you are not allowed to depict the prophet Muhammed.
I find it really annoying when people can't be bothered to find out the facts.
First off, ALL of these photos are old. Like 20 years old. Look at just the hairstyles and shirts. So, if they are of terrorist (which they're not), don't worry they're most likely dead. So no worries on that. My guess, rejected passport photos. Someone didn't want them. They got X'd out and stuffed in a drawer and forgotten about. And when the store closed down for whatever reason (maybe a war) these rejected photos would be the last thing I would take. It's simple and not sinister and that drives the American Reality TV Lifetime movie obsessed audience crazy.
good theories, it really could be anything though.
i think some people in the middle east are just as beautiful and culturally rich as people in south america and africa and everywhere.. i lived in egypt for a while and i found people just as ignorant as some people in canada, and same with very cultured. base people on who they are and not what country they come from.
Junky, I agree with you. My EXACT thoughts reading some of the crazy theories here... These were just the "bad" pictures, and the good ones were probably given to the customers!
Wow.
Many Islamics find a woman's bare face extremely pornographic because of the lips. There's a lot of craziness inflicted upon people these days.
There are staples in the pictures...so that means at one point or another they were stapled to something...possibly a portfolio/passport/board...which could mean the photos were being carefully examined for picking; passports, murder targets...or even more possibly underground modeling glamor shots!
The world may never know.
Pictures of former girlfriends?
I want to know more ... this is so intriguing ...
it's a derranged guy who had his heart broken by one of his old girlfriends....if only he could remember wich one. angery and confused he sets out to kill them, scribbling out their faces once they are gone.