Before the Gulf War in 1991, Olive Pierce did not know anything about the Middle East. Like many Americans, she didn’t know the difference between Iraq and Iran. And she certainly didn’t know about the lives of Iraqi children.

As a documentary photographer, however, Pierce examined the images of Iraqi children in the daily news. They were perishing, but what could she do?

Many years ago, the esteemed photographer Berenice Abbott said to Pierce about her work: “Maybe you are going to be good with children.” It was a prophetic comment because Pierce often has focused her camera on young people.

In 1999 at age 73, she defied economic sanctions, packed her Leicas, and left for Baghdad with a delegation from the peace organization Voices in the Wilderness. She went to take pictures of Iraqi children.

“It felt like the country was in irons,” said Pierce, who lives half the year in Rockland and half in Cambridge, Mass. “It felt depressed, repressed, gray, difficult, sparse. People don’t realize that the whole structure of the country has been shot to hell.”

Guarded carefully by a government minder, Pierce was restricted in what she could shoot. In search of children, she visited schools, hospitals and the market. She packed 100 rolls of film but, in a 10-day period, shot fewer than 20. Occasionally, she took photos covertly from a camera hanging near her hip. Mostly, she saw a generation of hungry children who were eager to touch her, to use their limited English, and to smile for her camera – despite their hunger or illness or shoelessness or isolation from the rest of the world.

“There are people over there,” said Pierce. “We have so much in common. We put up barriers, but people are so much the same. I hope people get that message with these pictures. These kids are not so different from our own kids. The only thing that can rise above fear is love. That’s what these pictures are about.”

In January, a selection of Pierce’s works will be exhibited at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. By then, she hopes, the conflict between the United States and Iraq will be resolved peacefully. “I wonder what has happened to the children in these pictures,” said Pierce. “I know their faces so well.” – By Alicia Anstead