Iraqi-born Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is a contributing photographer for Getty Images and a writer for the Guardian in London, but the work he submitted to American Photo speaks in a vernacular distinct from orthodox photojournalism. His images defy the urgent subjects of news photography, seizing instead on a unifying current of humanity. The images of Abdul-Ahad, are archetypes of the human experience--not headlines, not news stories, but rather metaphors for the way we now relate to the world we've created. In Abdul-Ahad's Baghdad we are asked to focus not on the divisiveness of war but on what makes us all the same: the harmony we can find even when the natural order is thrown into chaos. --Catherine Talese
