Is War Photography important and iconic to modern day society?
Have you ever considered what life
would be without photographs? Or how important and iconic photographs can be? “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have
caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after
you have forgotten everything.” American Photographer Aaron Siskind states
that photography has many aspects to its fine arts
reputation as it gives us a sense of being. Photography
is our very own gratification that we can construct
and modify to create a perspective and perceive it to the world. The power of
photography defines the timing, morality and memory of the moment with one
capture which will imprint into the human mind forever and I completely agree
with him. However, war photojournalism is a subject matter which is hardly ever
discussed as it is important and iconic to modern day society. Has the digital
age we live in today effected society as historic photographs aren’t cherished
enough? Technology has significantly enhanced from Roger Fenton’s pioneering
glass negatives to the modern day ‘Selfie’ generation which has changed the
perception of photography forever.
The purpose of combat photojournalism is not to showcase or glorify
violence and suffering with graphic imagery for the sake of shock value and
ratings. War photography allows us as a society to see the consequences of our
military engagements. We need to see the consequences of our decisions to go to
war, or to abstain from war, that we may make an informed decision as to
whether the necessity of that military engagement is worth the suffering and
death that follows. Additionally, we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into
the convenient attitude that war is something that happens "Over
there" and go about our day. We who are not "Over there"
fighting a war are still responsible for our government and the choices that it
makes because we can't see the conflict first hand, we have photojournalists
that send us combat imagery. That also doesn't mean that war photography is
always meant to prevent or halt war though it's a philosophical debate that
doesn't belong in the photography section, sometimes a war may be justified to
continue even with full knowledge of the suffering that follows, depending on
situation. It may even lead a nation to engage in a war, if they see atrocities
committed by another country that they simply cannot abide. Regardless, combat photography
shows us that our military conflicts have consequences, that real people suffer
sometimes terribly and that everyone involved is human.
War Photography through the
Decades
To get a true understanding and appreciation on how the relationship
between the still photographic image and the impact it has on any one person’s
personal conscious, means going back in time to over 150 years when the camera
first made its appearance onto the battlefield.
In the autumn of 1854 the ongoing Crimean war (modern day Ukraine) between
Russia and coalition Western European forces was beginning to come to the
attention of the British public, most notably leading dignitaries and figures
amongst the ruling elite, two such men Prince Albert and Duke of Edinburgh were
keen to obtain photographic documentation of the conflict, primarily for
propaganda gain with any images going on to be printed in the pro government
London Illustrated News.
To oversee and fulfill
this task, the elected government of the day turned to the esteemed British born
photographer Roger Fenton. Fenton originally a painter had happened upon this
new and revolutionary new art form some 3 years earlier whilst visiting the
Hyde Park great exhibition of 1851 and his subsequent viewing of an early
series of calotype photographic prints.
The brief handed down
to Fenton was simple, make the conflict seem more appealing and worthwhile to
the British public at large, who for their part were becoming increasingly negative
and vociferous towards the campaign a reaction in part fuelled by the critical
reporting coming from the Times war correspondent William Howard Russell.
Arriving in the war
zone in early March 1855 accompanied by his assistant Marcus Staring and a large
horse drawn wagon of equipment that was also to double as a mobile darkroom,
the pair immediately set about their business.
These were of course
fledgling days in the world of photography, a world which meant using heavy
cumbersome tripod mounted cameras as the recording tool of the day. This
equipment and its lack of flexibility was an obvious major handicap for this
particular genre of reportage photography, but this problem was not the only
area of concern for the war photographer of the 1850s.
The material the
cameras used to capture and record their images, came in the form of a large emulsion
coated glass plated negative, these negatives even in bright sunny lighting
conditions were painfully slow to react to light, meaning an exposure time
lasting for at least 10 seconds a system hardly conducive to the capture of
fast moving action the very stereotyped essence of war photography.
For his pictures Fenton had started to use
the wet-collodion process, a technique which afforded shorter exposure times
than previous methods it also had the added advantage that for the first time
an unlimited amount of prints come be made from the negative. However its one
downside was that the entire process from coating the light sensitive emulsion
on the plate to development (via exposure) had to be done in just 10 minutes
before the material could dry.
However it would be under these
circumstances that Fenton would produce was of the most famous and sobering war
photographs ever taken.
Titled “Valley of the Shadow of Death” the
photograph depicts the harrowing aftermath of a battlefield peppered with
recently discharged cannonballs, for many viewers the picture portrays a sense
of unease and emptiness highlighted by the fact that it is void of human
representation (a component standard in many studies of war photography) and
prompted Fenton to write
In coming to the ravine called the valley of death,
the sight passed all imagination:
Round shot and shell lay like a stream at the bottom
of the hallow all the way down,
You could not walk without treading upon them…
Roger Fenton
The image now forms part of the collection
at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Roger Fenton’s ‘Valley of Death’
Over a period of four months within the war
zone Fenton made over 350 large format glass negatives in the most trying of
conditions in which time he was to contact cholera, break several ribs and come
close to death due to inhaling the toxic fumes from the chemistry used in his
unventilated makeshift darkroom.
For the Photojournalist the proceeding
decades leading up to the dawn of the 20th century saw equipment
technology move at a frustratingly slow pace, cameras still presented the same
flaws heavy cumbersome and slow to use. However change was a foot at the
outbreak of the first world war Kodak had invented the flexible 127 format roll
film to be used in their increasingly popular box brownie and more compact vest
pocket cameras, here was an instrument small and light enough to carry but
still handicapped by slow emulsions making for potentially blurred pictures,
but one element the camera could not override was the authorities blanket ban
on frontline photography an enforcement not lifted until 1916.
Regardless of this law it was not uncommon
for many soldiers to conceal cameras within their standard kit (typically the
aforementioned folding vest pocket) the pictures were then smuggled out and
formed a visual diary of the horrors of war as seen through the infantry man’s
life.
Around this time first experimentations
were being trialled with new lighter and compact camera which employed a
smaller convenient film format “35mm” this new material would
eventually go on to be the war photographers film of choice right to the 21st
century and the digital revolution.
Over the preceding decades the use of 35mm
cameras began to grow in their popularity as technology advanced models became
increasingly user friendly making them more adaptable particularly in the field
of reportage imagery.
So with the outbreak of World War Two in
1939 miniature film cameras such the Leica e rangefinder had become the norm,
it was with this model that the Hungarian born photographer Robert Capa used to
capture a series of iconic images documenting the carnage of the Omaha Normandy
beach landings of 1944.
Prior to this, Capa had gained notoriety
for his coverage of the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). It was in 1936 near Gero
Muriano on the Cordoba front that Capa took his famed image the “falling
Soldier”, in it the picture purports to depict a soldier thrown
backwards at the moment a bullet strikes with fatal consequences. It’s
notoriety and fame doesn’t stem from any artistic merit, but the controversy
surrounding its authenticity. To this day there are many schools of thought
questioning whether the image is valid or set up, furthermore rumours persist
to this day questioning Capa’s
involvement in the picture all with certain scholars citing Gerda Taro
as the real photographer.
Undisputed though is Capa’s role in the D
Day beach landings of World War Two. On June 6th 1944 the biggest
invasion force ever witnessed to man assembled off the coast of Northern France
the armada consisted (in the main) of three allied forces Canadian, British and
American their objectives 5 beachheads along the Normandy coastline the sands
of Sword, Juno and Gold were to assaulted by the British and Canadian with the
Americans assigned Utah and Omaha.
For his part Capa had been detailed to come
ashore with elements of the American 1st infantry division forming
the second wave of attack attempting to capture the heavily defended Omaha
defences, armed with two 35mm Contax ll cameras mounted with 50mm lens Capa
took a total of 106 images in little over 2 hours whilst under constant German
gunfire.
Shortly after Capa returned to the London
offices of Life magazine along with 4 rolls of unprocessed film, however on
handing over the material for development a 15 year old over enthusiastic
darkroom technician Dennis Banks damaged 95 of the frames beyond repair by
setting the drying cabinet on a high setting thus melting the films emulsion.
The remaining 11 images would not only go on to feature in the publications 19th
June issue under the banner “BEACHHEADS OF NORMANDY: The fateful battle for Europe is joined by
sea and air”, but also stimulate and influence future generations of
photojournalists and filmmakers so much so that legendary Hollywood director
Steven Spielberg used the series for inspiration in his 1998 movie “Saving
Private Ryan”.
After the D Day landings Capa went on to
sporadically cover the rest of the war most notably recording the allied
liberation of Paris later that year. Two years later in the same city he would
help co-found the renowned picture agency “Magnum Photos”. In 1954 Life
Magazine commissioned Capa to travel to South East Asia to document the
on-going first Indochina war, an assignment he took with some reluctance as two
years earlier he had announced his retirement from war photography. At 2.55pm
on May 25th while attached to a French infantry regiment Capa was
fatally wounded whilst stepping on a landmine. Suffering multiple injuries
including a serious chest wound Capa was rushed to a nearby aids station where
he was pronounced dead.
One of Robert Capa’s ‘D-Day’ Photograph
This Indochina conflict which claimed the
life of Capa would ultimately act as a precursor to the 20 year long Vietnam
War. When in 1955 communist forces of the Soviet Union backed North Vietnamese
armies attacked their South Vietnamese counterparts that would lead to several
years of offensive and counteroffensive attacks by both sides. However in 1965
with the tide of war turning against the South the then US president Lyndon B
Johnson made the historic decision to send thousands of American combat troops
into the region escalating the conflict to a new level.
Throughout the civilised world the 1960s
were proving to be a revolutionary period of time, across the continents people
were beginning to challenge authority and voice their concerns and beliefs
about the systems controlling them and with it an appetite for free speech and
bureaucratic openness amongst the masses had developed, and nowhere would these
new found freedoms be exploited than the killing fields of South East Asia.
Here the reporting and documenting of front
line life was not only the reserve of seasoned and professional journalists,
but anybody with a taste of adventure, relevant equipment and the finance for
the trip could come and enrol in the press corp. Most notably young men such as
Tim Page, Dana Stone, and Sean Flynn (son of the Hollywood screen legend Errol)
however it wound this new found freedom of visual expression that would prove
the tragic demise for Stone and Flynn.
On the 8th April 1970 the pair
set out on assignment riding motorcycles, heading northward from the city of
Phnom Penh their aim was to travel along highway 1 somewhere along this road
they were captured by Viet Cong guerrillas, the following events are shrouded in
mystery, but what is clear that after a year spent in captivity, the pair were
executed in June 1971 by forces of the Khmer Rouge.
Western involvement in the Vietnam War was
to end dramatically in April 1975, with an embarrassing withdrawal of the country’s
capital city Saigon, and brought to a conclusion the best part of 15 years of
American military activity in the region, in this time Washington had learnt
some harsh lessons not only on the battlefield, but how powerful a weapon the
still photographic image could be, particularly when uncredited photographers are allowed to roam
unrestricted and uncensored in sensitive combat zones.
After these experiences respective
governments successfully clamped down hard on what and what not the media could
report and relay from a conflict frontline this stranglehold effect powers that
be enforced on the press would last unhindered up until the turn of the
millennium- and the digital age.
If the invention of the 35mm camera revolutionized
documentary photography, then the introduction of electronic cameras and the
power they give have taken the subject to a new and barely unimaginable level .
Conceived and developed in the latter years of the last century, since the
beginning of the new millennium digital cameras and the backup software and
perennials that give them support have become the norm in the 2015.
35mm Camera Nikon DSLR
Today a photographer working in any one of the world’s hotspots, has
the ability by way of portable device can edit and send a series of images to
news desks thousands of miles away in a matter of minutes, and by way of the
internet, give the watching world a
rolling insight of fast moving stories.
Conclusion
If there is one word in the English language that sums up war
photography, then that word surely must be propaganda “A form of communication aimed
towards influencing the attitude of a population toward some cause or position”. Be it in a moving Image, printed word,
internet blog or still photographic image the media at large has the power at
hand to sway and influence public opinion, to quote a famous saying “The
pen is mightier than the sword”. At
the start of this essay I set myself one simple question “Is war photography important and
iconic to modern day society”. To truthfully answer this I feel one
must ask and address the following issues.
Ever since the armies of Sumer and Elan engaged in military conflict
in Mesopotamic in 2700 BC, one thing is sure war has always divided opinion and
has seldom been seen as black and white in the way it has been reported. It is
no secret that up until the digital age that we live in today, governments and
authorities would always strictly censor the written and visual material that
came from any war zone. The exception to this rule was the Vietnam War of the
1960s, when the free world experimented with a more liberal way of reporting.
Today of course we live a world that revolves around the internet,
where the vast majority of us have 24/7 access to the technology that allows us
to share uncensored imagery at a moment’s notice with millions on the worldwide
web, with the advent of smart phones, todays modern day soldier carries the
potential to take and send a highly sensitive picture to any part of the world.
Leaving me to conclude that when it comes to present day imagery of political
and religious conflict the photographic Jeannie is well and truly out of the
bottle.
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