Still from 'Shadow Sites II' #1

"Jananne Al-AniBorn Kirkuk, Iraq, 1966. Lives London, UK
Still from 'Shadow Sites II' 2011
Single channel digital video. Duration 8 mins 38 secs
Photography by Adrian Warren
Courtesy the Artist and Rose Issa Projects, London
This is a still from a video composed of a series of aerial views, which show that the desert is inhabited and not the unoccupied wilderness it is sometimes believed to be. The title draws on a phenomenon familiar to archaeologists: when the sun is at its lowest, shadows make visible the remains of otherwise undetectable settlements. Al-Ani’s images are presented without explanation and the scale of the landscapes is difficult to interpret. They are deliberately ambiguous and point to the limitations of photography."