The story “Iraq: restoring smiles” by Luca Catalano Gonzaga, published on Spiegel Online.
To pay a high price is a whole medical system, to the point that healthcare could become a privilege for the few: there is lack of equipment and facilities, specialists, medications, particularly in the regions most affected by the violence. As in Nāṣiriya, a city located in southern Iraq, where children are the ones being sacrificed by a global system of insecurity and poor healthcare.
The portraits, by Luca Catalano Gonzaga, are taken in Habobbi Hospital in Nāṣiriya and show their faces before entering the operating room, all marked by deformities of the body and facial burns caused by domestic accidents or even worse, by unexploded ordnance still scattered across the country.
These portraits are part of a wider photographic project called A shameless life.
The project is currently active and is funded by the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation and supported for the logistics aspects by Emergenza Sorrisi Onlus.