Victor J. Blue’s panoramic photographs of the destroyed cities of Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, navigate a landscape of devastation from aerial bombardment scarcely seen since World War II.
Between October 2016 and October 2017- from the beginning of the campaign for Mosul until the end of that for Raqqa- the US-led coalition dropped 46,683 air-released munitions in Iraq and Syria, most on the twin capitals of the ISIS caliphate.
The cities’ destruction begs the question: what was the cost of the West’s war against extremism if the battlegrounds remain permanently uninhabitable? The cities were leveled in the fight to liberate them from their captors. More than 18 months after ISIS was driven from Raqqa and Mosul, the life of these places remains frozen in time, at a moment just after the last bombs fell, the fires went out, and the US led coalition declared victory and moved on. But the civilians of Mosul and Raqqa are left to consider the scale of the destruction, and the reality that they have been forgotten.
This exhibition is curated by Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera.
Victor J. Blue
Cities in Dust
April 4 – April 21, 2019
Bronx Documentary Center
614 Courtlandt Ave Bronx, NY 10451
https://www.bronxdoc.org
an apartment block lies half destroyed in Raqqa, Syria, Sunday, November 11, 2018. © Victor J. Blue
Residents make their way among destroyed buildings in Raqqa, Syria, Monday, November 12, 2018.More than a year after the end of the brutal fighting that liberated the one time capital city of the Islamic State, and a devastating air campaign that mostly flattened it, Raqqa lies in ruins.Photograph: Victor J. Blue
a patrol of Iraqi militia, the Hash del Shabi, drives through the Maidan, the riverfront district of the Old City, now completely destroyed in Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, November 6, 2018. © Victor J. Blue
