Twana's Box

Twana’s Box can be described in many ways: as a journey through a photographer’s rare archive, documenting the Iraqi Kurdistan region from 1974 to 1992; as a son’s quest to find his missing father, murdered by a military regime; as a young man piecing together the fragments of a scattered family in a scattered culture; as a photographer who, through the stories of others, begins to understand his own identity in a time of war.

Twana’s Box is not only a photo book containing a selection from Twana Abdullah’s archives; it is also a unique glimpse into a time and place in a region that has since been completely transformed. Rawsht has spent years piecing together his father’s negatives and stories. His archival work inspired him to become a photographer himself, working for Metrography, Iraq’s first independent photo agency, before immigrating to Europe.

“These archives open a door that allows us to enter the unknown minimal history that historians rarely write about. A photograph always invites us to reflect on the moments that unfolded in front of the camera, and after being captured, it helps us see things we can’t see with the naked eye. In this photographer’s case, what is made visible is human effort….” Baktyar Ali