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September 7, 2008 |
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Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
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Columns |
 
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Photography by Christopher Anderson, Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey, John Stanmeyer. Essays by Peter Howe, Peter Maass, Rèmi Ourdan, and David Rieff. The first Gulf War brought with it a new and unimagined level of television news coverage, allowing us to watch on screens as warplanes sent from the United States dropped from the sky to demolish Saddam Hussein's military apparatus, man and machine. It wasn't just the war that filled out the top stories in those days, but the coverage of the war as well. Jokes abounded about the skill and speed of CNN news teams, and how they might just be more effective in gathering and disseminating information and intelligence than the military's own professionals.  This second time around, the coverage was just as thorough, probably more. "Embedded" became an often-used word in the everyday vocabulary of our friends and coworkers. The news was again itself the news.  This, of course, is all a story of television news: cinematography of war. Lucky for us, however, the barrage of sometimes disorienting moving images and talking-head analysis is not the only available documentation of the horrific events that have unfolded since September 11th, 2001.  We can still turn to the work of the men and women who labor tirelessly, and at great risk, to document these events with the use of still photography. Far from rendered outmoded or obsolete in this age of the satellite, the photographic image has a special importance in times when events unfold at rates that challenge our capacity for understanding.  In his introduction to "War: USA--Afghanistan--Iraq," a collection of work from VII, a group of the world's leading photojournalists, Peter Howe writes, "the illusion of time arrested that a photograph provides allows our minds to encompass events small and large, to preserve the memory of pleasurable moments, the grief of tragedy, and gives us a sense of order at times when none appears to exist."  There is no better proof of this statement than the 223 photographs that follow in this hefty volume, including images taken during the first hours of the attack in New York City, when James Nachtwey, who spends most of his life covering tragic violence in foreign places, was surprised to find himself in the middle of just the kind of situation that so often called him away, only this time without leaving home.
 The sets of images that follow, taken by Nachtwey and the other contributing members of VII (Christopher Anderson, Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris and John Stanmeyer), follow events through the aftermath in New York, the tough decisions made by policy makers, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq and the subsequent days of tense occupation. We are provided with images of violence and destruction, of the struggle to survive and to heal, of soldiers and civilians, of the young and of the dead.  Most importantly, we are provided with the special silence of the still photograph, with the gift of truly great photojournalism that demands our attention, calls out for a continuing effort to understand, and allows us to see the human experience often left behind in the flow of information that characterizes the modern event.  This book is not only a stunning achievement in image making, but also a powerful memorial to what has been endured here and far away. These photographs, along with the remembrances and essays that accompany them, will go on to be an important tool for those who, in the future, try to decide the meaning of these times, and what to do once they have passed. - Michael Jack Pazdon    For more information on how you can get your hands on this book, visit Amazon.com.
>>Click here to visit VII Photo Agency's website... >>Click here to visit Design Method's website...
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