Iraqi Photojournalist Ali Arkady Invited as Global Journalist in Residence

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When Ali Arkady embedded with Iraq’s Emergency Response Division (ERD) during the advance on Mosul in the winter, he initially viewed the members of this elite security force as “liberators, not destroyers.” But as he spent time with the ERD, he witnessed scenes of torture, rape and targeted killings – and Arkady felt compelled to share these harrowing images with the world.
“Things now are worse,” Arkady wrote in a recent essay, “much worse than what I expected or had been able to imagine: torturing, raping, and murdering people for the slightest, vague suspicions, or even without suspicions at all.”
As a photographer with the elite photo collective VII, Arkady has worked with many of the leading news organizations in the US, Europe and the Middle East. He has also served as mentor for a number of Yazidi girls who fled ISIS capture, and who are interested in becoming photographers themselves.