Briefing images issued by INS Department of Propaganda, November 2004

'A map shows selected and conventionalised features: an air photograph makes no selection and employs no convention. A photograph will thus record not only such major features as are commonly delineated on a map, but a wealth of minor and often transient detail never found on the largest general survey. This detail constitutes an almost inexhaustible store of information of value to geology, to geography, to ecology, to agriculture, archaeology, history and town-planning; and these are only the principal fields of study that gain from the application of air photography to their problems. [...] The fact that, compared with maps, photographs neither select nor conventionalise the information they present has called for special techniques of interpretation to serve this multiplicity of interests.' (J. K. S. St Joseph, ed., The Uses of Air Photography, London: John Baker, 1966)

Samarra, Iraq. A small part of the medieval city that extends for some 25 miles beside the Tigris, 65 miles NNW of Baghdad [...] now maksed by a light covering of sand.