akaKURDISTAN
Reviewed by: R.C.
Review started: February 12, 2023
Review last updated: February 12, 2023
Site Links
Data and Sources
- Archival Photos from private collectors, family collections, and national archives
- Archival text from diaries, letters, newspaper, memoirs, telegrams
- Interview Transcripts
- Quotes from Books (Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History)
Processes
- Zine-style visual that combines archival photos and text
- Mapping
- Timeline
Presentation
An interactive website that allows user to engage with this archive in three ways:
- Explore (Use map and timeline to engage with archival photographs, text, and stories)
- Identify (Provide context to unidentified photographs discovered during research)
- Contribute (Submit images and stories to become part of the archive)
Digital Tools Used
- Unable to identify
Languages
- English and 3 other languages
Review
This web-based project aims to create a digital space to create and engage with Kurdish people’s collective memory. There are 20 million Kurds scattered around the world—they are a population without a homeland oral national archive. This image-based digital archive stems from six years of work where Kurds, historians, archivists, and others had been adding, sharing and preserving Kurdish stories and history in this safe and anonymous space.
In the past century, the Kurdish people had fought for their independence and survival. During this period, violent crimes were committed against them and many were displaced from their homeland. Turks and other oppressors had forbidden them to speak in their native language or celebrate their traditional holidays, and prohibited them from possessing photographs. Many photographs were destroyed by Kurds themselves to avoid imprisonment or even the death penalty. The photographs shown in this archive are, thus, very rare. Many of them were from foreign photographers or journalists who were on assignment in Kurdish regions in the past century, other photographs were stolen from officers at the risk of punishment, and, finally, some are from family archives.
This project allows audiences to engage with the archive via a timeline in the bottom of the navigation, or via a map. Archival images are often juxtaposed with text from interviews, book quotes, poems, letters, and diaries in a zine-like design format. This archive enriches the collective memory of the Kurds by offering a variety of images related to the hardships and struggles the Kurd had to face and their family memories.
The zine-like style, where images layered in a collage-like style with accompanying text, offers an engaging way to consume the information dense content. The timeline is intuitive from a user experience standpoint, but there are a few areas of improvement that could be made. Specifically, having a more obvious visual cue to show where within the timeline the user is viewing. Additionally, incorporating captions might be helpful when showcasing handwritten letters which are difficult to read. Lastly, incorporating content-warnings might also be a considerate addition for the audience as there are mentions/images of violence, bombs, and a man setting himself on fire.
Overall, this project successfully shared fragmented memories of the Kurdish people, to form a digital archive of their collective memory. It has also demonstrated the complex history of the Kurdish people from a humanistic lens.