28 cards, dedicated to lives cut short
By: Peter Annand ; with Camilla Birkeland, Renata Buziak, Martin Barry, Henri Van Noordenburg (front photographs), Brigid Annand, Renata Buziak (back photographs)
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965; Birkeland, Camilla, photographer; Buziak, Renata, photographer; Barry, Martin, photographer; Noordenburg, Henri van, photographer; Annand, Brigid, photographer; Queensland Centre for Photography; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Edition: Unlimited edition.
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Brisbane, Queensland]
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: Twenty eight cards, dedicated to lives cut short
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.
Notes: Consists of Inkjet prints (two-sided), cardboard box.

"We have dedicated these lived moments to lives cut short. Like cut flowers, they are caught in visual haiku. On the front of each card is a moment, captured by cellphone or point-and-shoot camera, in the life of one of us. Digital tracings on each image invite viewers to imagine being in the skin of that person, at that moment. On the back of each card is a photograph taken accidentally - a similar place, but with no human mind framing it. Like the people caught in the al-Mutanabbi street explosion, we six share a cultural practice - in our case, photographic art - whose function can be to illuminate the humanity that could unite all of us"--The Centre for Fine Print Research website (viewed April 20, 2015).

The artists, originally from Australia, Norway, Poland and the Netherlands, are associated through their involvement with the Queensland Centre for Photography.

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.