EXHIBITIONS
Tor Eigeland, ethnographic photos of the Marsh Arabs.
In a remarkable meeting of people and landscape, two things identified the Ma'dan or Marsh Arabs of Iraq. They lived at the meeting point of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in a beautiful place that may have been the location of the Garden of Eden. And they had occupied this unique land since pre-history - they are glimpsed in early Sumer images. They survived in their reed huts, raising water buffalo, fishing and hunting wild boar, because they maintained the balance of their ecosystem.
When Wilfred Thesiger went to live with the Ma'dan in the 1950s, and when Tor Eigeland travelled there in the 1960s, these Arabs of the marshes were people whom time had forgotten - Thesiger was the first Westerner to visit many of the villages. Thesiger's words and Eigeland's images capture the beauty and innocence of this unique corner of the world.
The Ma’dan lost their Eden when the Tigris and Euphrates were dammed and the marshes drained. Now Tor Eigeland's images stand as a monument, a rare ethnographic record of a lost world. These precious images bring us back to a time and place where people lived in harmony with their environment and respected the balances the natural world needs to thrive.
Anthony Sattin, author of The Gates of Africa and The Pharaoh’s Shadow.
