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Photographing War
It is a grotesque paradox that war, humankind’s most destructive activity,
has also been the inspiration for some of its greatest moments of creativity.
This paradox is reflected in our personal and societal responses to conflict.
War is ‘evil’, but it can also be ‘just’; sacrifice can be ‘worthless’, but
it can also be ‘glorious’. War undoubtedly brings out the worst in humankind
but it can also prompt episodes of extraordinary courage, compassion and self-sacrifice.
War is often regarded as ‘the mother of invention’. However, it may equally
well be considered to be ‘the mother of creativity’. From Homer’s Iliad to
Goya’s The Disasters of War or Britten’s War Requiem, our seemingly
innate compulsion to destroy each other has been the source of inspiration for
some of the greatest works of art. This is not surprising. No activity of humankind
engages our emotions as totally as war. War places individuals and societies
in the most extreme of situations and, consequently, provokes the most extreme
responses – both good and bad.
The greatest war art can transcend time and space, making powerful statements
about the nature of the human condition that go far beyond the particular conflict
being represented. The Spanish Civil War was recorded in many thousands of photographs,
miles of newsreel film and millions of words of journalism. And yet, the single
image which more than any other encapsulates the full horror of that conflict
is a painting – symbolic and expressionistic rather than representative and
factual – Picasso’s Guernica. Similarly, some war photographs transcend
their status as images and take on a separate existence as symbolic icons. In
February 1945, for example, Joe Rosenthal took what is arguably the most famous
photograph of the Second World War. Entitled Old Glory goes up on Mt Suribachi,
Iwo Jima, it shows a group of American marines raising the Stars and
Stripes. Rosenthal’s photograph appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines
and became an icon of America’s belief in ultimate victory. Copies appeared
on postage stamps and posters. A life-size bronze sculpture based on the photograph
forms the US Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington. US Camera magazine
summed up the photograph’s resonance: ‘In a sense, in that moment, Rosenthal’s
camera recorded the soul of a nation.’
The response of individual photographers to the challenges of war, while mirroring
that of society as a whole, has, of course, been deeply personal and subjective.
However, it is possible to consider war photography as falling into three categories:
‘Art’; ‘News’; and ‘Propaganda’. These categories are not mutually exclusive.
Neither are they objective or fixed. Roger Fenton’s photographs of the Crimean
War, originally created as reportage and semi-official propaganda, are now regularly
displayed as works of art.
Larry Burrow’s haunting images of the Vietnam War taken as reportage for Life
magazine are also powerful tools for anti-war propaganda. As the Chinese proverb
says: ‘There are three truths: my truth, your truth and the truth.’ Photography’s
perceived status as an inherently ‘truthful’ medium – ‘The camera never lies’
– has shaped our response to war photography. And yet, what is truth? Most war
reporters take great pride in being objective and remaining detached from the
horrific events they witness. Many war photographers, however, find it impossible
to maintain this level of emotional detachment. As Don McCullin writes in his
autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour: ‘Even with all my years of watching,
I have never been able to switch off my feelings, nor do I think that it would
be right to do so. Few are equipped to remain unmoved by the spectacle of what
war does to people. These are sights that should, and do, bring pain and shame,
and guilt.’
All photography is selective. This process of selection may be based on the
photographer’s aesthetic or technical standards or, more broadly, their political,
ethical or moral sensibilities. When George Rodger accompanied the first troops
to liberate Belsen concentration camp, he found himself, to his horror, mentally
re-arranging corpses so as to create more dramatic compositions. The experience
convinced him to stop being a war photographer. He later wrote: I swore I would
never take another war picture and I didn’t. That was the end.’ Other photographers,
however, have adopted a different approach. At Gettysburg, in July 1863, Alexander
Gardner took one of the most famous photographs of the American Civil War. The
Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter shows a Confederate soldier lying dead in
a rocky ravine with his weapon beside him. It has now been proved that Gardner,
having already photographed the soldier, then noticed a more picturesque location
about forty yards away. Undeterred, he placed the corpse on a blanket and dragged
the body to the ravine, posing it to create a dramatic composition and adding
a rifle from his supply of props. Gardner’s photograph is a ‘lie’ but does this
make it any less truthful a statement regarding the horror and waste of war?
Indeed, by ‘improving’ on reality might it even be claimed that Gardner is serving
the need of some ‘greater truth’? Today, the possibilities presented by digital
imaging make this issue more pertinent than ever. In March 2003, Brian Walski
of the Los Angeles Times succumbed to the temptation to ‘improve’ one of his
photographs. Using photo manipulation software he combined elements of two of
his photographs taken during the Iraq war so as to create a more dramatic image.
Only after publication was it noticed that several civilians appear twice in
the background of the photograph. Walski was subsequently sacked.
In 1863, the American author Oliver Wendell Holmes saw an album of photographs
of the ongoing Civil War taken by Mathew Brady: ‘Let him who wishes to know
what war is look at this series of illustrations. These wrecks of manhood thrown
together in careless heaps or ranged in ghastly rows for burial were alive but
yesterday… Many people would not look through this series. Many, having
seen it and dreamed of its horrors, would lock it up in some secret drawer,
that it might not thrill or revolt those whose soul sickens at such sights.
It was so nearly like visiting the battlefield to look over these views, that
all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene,
strewed with rags and wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses
of our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they
too vividly represented.’ Has anything changed over the subsequent 140 years? Colin Harding
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