During his active career from the 1950s through to the late 1970s, he chronicled an Iraqi way of life that was rapidly being lost as the country embarked on a modernization program.

He stopped taking photographs following the rise of Saddam Hussein, as he was unable to maintain his former optimistic outlook for Iraq's future.

The social and religious prohibitions on making images and figurative representations meant that Iraq was relatively late-adopter of photography and cinematography.

A handful of photographers and film-makers, such as Abd al-Karim Tiouti and Murad al-Daghistani, had been operating in Basra and Mosul since the late 19th-century and the early 20th-century, but opportunities for young Iraqis to learn the art of photography were rare.

[2] It was not until the late 1940s, when al-Ani was an adolescent that the number of commercial photographic studios in Iraq's major cities, including Baghdad, proliferated.

[3] Al-Ani was first exposed to photography when, as a boy, he would help in his older brother's Mutanabbi Street shop which was adjacent to the studio of a Jewish photographer, by the name of Nissan.

[4] His earliest photos were of the everyday scenes and objects in his immediate surroundings- street life, palms, plants, faces and people on rooftops.

[5] As a staff member of the IPC, he took photographs for the company’s Arabic-language magazine, Ahl al-Naf [People of Oil] under Percival's watchful eye.

[9] During this period, al-Ani travelled extensively documenting Iraqi social life and culture, industry, agriculture, workers, machinery and development.

[18] His contribution to Iraqi art and culture was 'rediscovered' by a team from the Ruya Foundation, who were working to preserve Iraq's artistic heritage and came across al-Ani's collection.

His ability to combine Iraq's ancient art heritage within a contemporary format suggests that he was influenced by mid-20th century Iraqi artists, including Jawad Saleem.