The collection features 27 photographs of Middle Eastern life as seen by Steven Raymer, a journalism professor and adjunct faculty member of IU’s Dhar India Studies program, during his career as a National Geographic staff photographer between 1974 and 2015.
Raymer said Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul Istrabadi and Professor Emeritus Claude Cookman helped curate the collection.
Ambassador Istrabadi is the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Deputy Permanent Representative of Iraq and founding director of the IU Center for the Study of the Middle East, according to his website.
Cookman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and former visual communications and history of photography professor at IU.
“I ended up with pictures from the Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, all through the Gulf States, Saudia Arabia, Yemen,” Raymer said.
Raymer said the photographs provide an intimate window into Middle Eastern cultures, some of which are now virtually inaccessible due to war and political conflict.
“Many of these, I couldn’t do again,” Raymer said. “I’ve been blessed with being able to have access over the last few decades to places that you simply couldn’t go to today.”
Though a few of the photos have been featured in National Geographic magazine, Raymer said more than half of the collection is unpublished content.
“It’s meant to be a personal portrait of the people I’ve met and the places I’ve seen in the Middle East,” Raymer said.
Raymer said the collection is meant to please the eye as well as open it.
“Hopefully it will challenge a few of our stereotypes about the Middle East,” Raymer said. “I hope it humanizes the people of an area that we just tend to lump together as one big problem.”
Since becoming a National Geographic staff photographer in 1972, Raymer has traveled to more than 85 countries around the world.
Raymer has been the recipient of a variety of honors and awards, including multiple first-place awards from the White House News Photographer’s Association.
He is also the recipient of a citation for excellence in foreign reporting from the Overseas Press Club of America, according to his website.
The University of Missouri and the National Press Photographer’s Association named Raymer its Magazine Photographer of the Year in 1976, according to his website.
Raymer has made appearances on global news outlets such as “The Today Show,” BBC and Voice of America, and his work has been exhibited in museums across the U.S. as well as Great Britain.
In addition to a prolific career in photojournalism, Raymer has authored a multitude of books, including “Images of a Journey: India in Diaspora” and “Redeeming Calcutta: A Portrait of India’s Colonial Capital.”
The CSME will be hosting an ongoing series of events throughout the 2015-16 academic school year.
The exhibit will be free and open to the public.
