My brother Doug was in Baghdad in 2003 during the American invasion. If you've seen pictures of injured Iraqi children on the web, odds are he took at least one of them; his portraits of the time are among the most widely disseminated.
On 9 March 2003, eleven days before the first bombs dropped, he visited an elementary school classroom and asked the children to illustrate their visions of peace. The results are reproduced below, with permission.
What strikes me about these pictures is they could have been drawn by school children anywhere. The yearn for peace and the uncomplicated wisdom of young people seem to be universal.
Click on any image to enlarge it.
Doug blogs here.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Visions of Peace
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11 comments:
Why can't adults see such peace through children's eye?
Thank you for sharing this.
That is cool! Amazing how the themes of balloons, hearts and flowers run through. Why balloons? That has to be some cultural reason, LOL.
I read somewhere, and I think it was in a book by Elisabeth Kubler Ross, that children in Nazi concentration camps drew on the walls pictures of butterflies. And now that I see the same things in these pictures, as well as the balloons, that in a child's mind peace equates with freedom, the ability to float above it all.
These are really cool, Stephen. Very interesting how some ideals transcend cultural divides.
Kath: I think that's a brilliant observation!
I hope these children are all still alive, and well.
It does show how much we invent the distinctions and differences, as we age into suspicion and fear. Brightness and harmony are treasured, innocent goals, yet most people see them as naive. Maybe they're just more honest aspirations that somehow get lost along the way.
I wonder what the kids would draw today.
Thanks for sharing these, Stephen.
Thanks, Jude. I have my moments. :)
Thank you for sharing these wonderful drawings done by children living so far away.
And we think kids need to be taught. All of these wonderful works of art depict nature. Flowers. Trees. Butterflies!
The preservation of hope...life. Yeah. The world would be a better place if we all stayed in the 1st grade.
I love kids' drawings. Their view of the world is so pure.
Thanks for taking the time to pull this post together. It's beautiful.
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