Books Were Burned

Description:	Letterpress. Edition of 15.This broadside is from the collection of a historic suite of hand-printed literary broadsides which are a part of the Al-Mutannabi Street Starts Here broadside project at the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts at the FAU Libraries. A newspaper photograph showed an anti-war protester carrying an Iraqi flag outside the Houses of Parliament in London at the time of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war. When reading about the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street in Bagdad I recalled the image as one possibility for representing the project. I had been told about the project by a poet when I was helping him to get his hands dirty through the use of letterpress. The resulting image is small because the type used was the only condensed face that I had available at the time to give me the shape of the flag when using the words I have chosen. I hope that people will remember those who died and those whose lives were changed by the bombing (as well as the loss of precious books). We must keep ideas and words flowing to draw attention to the evils of war and help to support Medecins Sans Frontieres at the same time.
Origin:	2009
Created By:	Ellis, Les
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Publisher:	Brighton Independent Printmaking (Brighton, England)
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/1562
Collection:	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	broadsides letterpress printing art

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