SAMUEL GORHAM DESIGN
101 BEADS
KURDISTAN IN WAR
101 beads was a free-lance project I did for the photographer Gaylan Nazhad. The brief was to create a book featuring photographs from Iraqi Kurdistan that he captured over two years during the regional conflict with Islamic State, it depicts the society of Kurdish conflict. Images from the frontline, refugee camps and detention centres are used to express the flux of war and its consequences for the psychological and physical landscape of Kurdistan and its people. The book’s photographer, himself Kurdish, attempts to disparage many assumptions of the Middle-East and violence itself.
The book’s title is a metaphor refer to the 101 Islamic prayer beads. These beads are connected to form a loop which the person continuously cycles through their hands whilst they pray which is a strong metaphor referring to the continuous violence and war which plagues Iraqi Kurdistan.
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Hand writing was used for the title to give the cover a more human touch as the book itself is about the people and the emotional and physical effects the war had upon those people.