New Art, New Markets

 September/October issue of Canvas Magazine

After Darkness: Social Impact and Art Institutions

Review of the exhibition by photographer Abbie Trayler Smith 

Museum Worlds Journal
Volume 6 (July 2018) Issue 1 - p.132-138

The photographer Abbie Trayler Smith traveled to Iraq in the autumn of 2016, after the Islamic-State-controlled areas of Northern Iraq, as far as the city of Mosul, had been liberated by allied forces. She traveled with Oxfam Iraq to cover the humanitarian situation and the problems that refugees and “ISIS widows” faced, as they were living in makeshift camps before they attempted to return to their homes. Many of her digital C-type photographs in the After Darkness series portray frozen moments in time: a bedraggled mother, arms around her fair-haired children as a black cloud from burning oil fills the sky behind her; waves of dirt and sand on the window of one of the rickety buses that transported people from one horrific situation to the next; a disfigured child standing with her mother and father; and countless other pictures of women and children surrounded by annihilation and devastation. Beside each picture, Trayler Smith has added a short description or story to give the viewer an idea of the context of each photograph. And this is what she has to say about her motivation.