ABOUT THE SERIES

Kurdistan was, in the past years, often the center of photojournalistic reporting. An autonomous region spanning across the north of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, it was subjected to violence from Islamic radical groups (most recently) since 2014. But where many photographers turned their lens towards the conflict itself, Simon Chang seemed to be more interested in the less obvious wounds of the nation, ones concealed even inside it. Between two visits to north Iraq – one in 2018 and one in 2019, he became interested in two places existing as part of everyday life yet removed or rejected from the eye of the public. The first was Hawler, a psychiatric hospital in Erbil, the second The Duhok Municipal Slaughterhouse in the mountains of Simele.