March 9, 2007 Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad
By: Carol Todaro
Contributors: Bruck, Julie, 1957- poet; Raghavan, Sudarsan, writer; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Carol Todaro]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Miami Shores, FL]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Other titles: Washington post.
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

Carol Todaro is an artist and writer who combines both activities by making artists' books. The Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, the Library of Congress, the Jaffe Collection at Florida Atlantic University, the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Miami-Dade Public Library have collected her work. She teaches at New World School of the Arts and the University of Miami, and is a member of the Miami Poetry Collective.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 10.

Medium: Pigment prints on rag paper, leporello binding.

"March 9, 2007 Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad is based on a poem by Julie Bruck, and a report by Sudarsan Raghavan, first published by the Washington post"--Colophon.

"My first project with the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition was a broadside made in collaboration with poet Julie Bruck. Bruck's poem, and the newspaper account which inspired it, takes place four days after the bombing. My artist's book is a tribute to both texts. I sought to maintain their restrained and elegiac tone. Rather than illustrate their images, I let them stand alone in the blue sky described by the writers, and had the words fade as the reader moves through the book"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.