WRITERS PRIZE: 02 / DEC / 2025
LOOKING FOR MEANING
by Laramie Shubber
My first memories of Iraq were built through the stories that accompanied our family archive. There were ones that my family told me and ones that I told myself. More than personal photos, I also saw them as historical documents that showed lives that were too often forgotten about in the news about Iraq.
You can imagine what some of them look like. Multi generational families laughing together, birthdays and so on. Photos that painted a picture of a joyful life that I always felt was taken from me and that I couldn’t connect to what was happening in the news.
And then I happened upon this portrait of my mother as a young woman. Her expression - or apparent lack of - initially unsettled me. I could see a vulnerable aspect in her eyes that I recognise in her today, it’s this detail that begins to hold my gaze and triggers an almost emotional response in me.
Where someone might see a blank expression, I see vulnerability and trauma in this young Kurdish - Iraqi woman’s eyes. This archival, historical photo suddenly holds so much more meaning that I’m certain other people must also see.
On a trip to Beirut, I showed the picture to a Lebanese man sitting in next to me in a cafe and asked him, "What do you see?" His answers were guided by what’s personal to him: Lebanon and its own social history. He recognised the geometric patterns behind her as being from the region, pondered whether her dress indicated that she was from a non-religious family and questioned whether her necklace was a cross. He placed her in the context he knew. Perhaps because it is human nature to try and find parts of ourselves in images in our attempts to identify or relate. But for him it was just a photo, nothing stood out particularly that would make it linger in his mind.
Finally I decided to ask my mother the story behind this photo that I’ve been questioning. It was completely different to my initial thoughts. Her friend knew a photographer who wanted to take pictures of a model so my mother was suggested. My mother told me that she was very excited because this photographer had worked in Europe. But I asked her "why do you look so tense? ""I was trying to stay still so that I wouldn’t blur and ruin the picture." For my mother the photograph is a document of an exciting event, whilst I had thought that the picture aestheticised all that she had gone through, even before she had gone through it.
There’s an undeniable romanticism with archival photography and a feeling that the photos that are so important to us personally, should hold the same meaning to other people. I had crafted a story around the image that held such strong meaning for me but to others, including the subject of the photography, it was a simple document.
Like many people, I’ve also aimlessly looked through the forgotten memories of families at markets. I wonder if one day this image, and others, will find its way to a market somewhere and if someone will find meaning in my family’s history or toss it aside.
Looking for Meaning was shortlisted for the Source prize for new writing about photography in 2025.
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