Iraq – “Mazal”, the oldest Iraqi photographer

The seventy-year-old Samira Mazal is Iraq’s oldest and first female photographer. At the age of 16, she obtained a photography license from the Ministry of Guidance at the time, and she had to deal with the customs and traditions which limit women’s freedom and kill her creativity. Mazal inherited her career from her ancestors including her mother and siblings and later passed it to her children. Mazal states that her popularity exceeded “Al-Amara” city, the center of Maysan governorate, southern Baghdad. Women come to her from all over Iraq to take pictures, and she says that she had been arrested in Baghdad and was sentenced to five years imprisonment, a year after obtaining the license because of her political activities and her camera was confiscated.