Saddam's Throne

Richard Mosse has an incredible photo series on Saddam's palaces. From an interview with the artist:

The most interesting thing about the whole endeavor for me was the very fact that the U.S. had chosen to occupy Saddam's palaces in the first place. If you're trying to convince a population that you have liberated them from a terrible dictator, why would you then sit in his throne? A savvier place to station the garrison would have been a place free from associations with Saddam, and the terror and injustices that the occupying forces were convinced they'd done away with. Instead, they made the mistake of repeating history.  This is why I've titled this body of work Breach. "Breach" is a military maneuver in which the walls of a fortification (or palace) are broken through. But breach also carries the sense of replacementas in, stepping into the breach. The U.S. stepped into the breach that it had created, replacing the very thing that it sought to destroy.

More pictures here.

(Hat tip: Kottke)