Through the Lens of Conflict A Dive into War Photography

Reading list

Nadine Abel-Esslingen

Visitors of the National Library can currently discover a selection of documents on the topic of war photography presented in the display cases on the second floor of the Reading Room. The inspiration for this feature came from Josh Lustig’s article “A photographer’s journey to the eye of the storm” in the Financial Times (06.04.2024) about the war photographer Tim Hetherington. The article was written to introduce the exhibition Storyteller: photography by Tim Hetherington at the Imperial War Museum in London (20.04. - 29.09.2024).

This year marks also the 13th anniversary of his death. He died while covering the civil war in Libya, just 40 years old. This exceptional exhibition, that regroups his work in different media, reveals a talented and brave person who returned to conflict zones after the war to research in depth its causes and consequences. The books and films presented in this list expose the importance of the war photographer to help us understand the chaos of the world.

Die Amerikanerin in Hitlers Badewanne : drei Frauen berichten über den Krieg : Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller und Martha Gellhorn (Elisabeth Bronfen et al.)

In der Bibliothek verfügbar

Bronfen hat die Erlebnisberichte über den Zweiten Weltkrieg dieser drei beeindruckenden und glamourösen Persönlichkeiten in diesem gut geschilderten Buch gesammelt, obwohl das Thema ernst ist. Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) war die erste weibliche Fotografin, die 1936 von Life Magazine engagiert wurde und gehörte zu den vier ursprünglichen Fotografen des Magazins. Sie arbeitete auch eng mit ihrem zukünftigen Ehemann, dem Autor Erskine Caldwell, zusammen. Als einzige westliche Fotografin berichtete sie 1941 über die deutsche Invasion von Moskau. Sie war Amerikas erste akkreditierte Kriegsfotografin im Zweiten Weltkrieg und die erste, die an einer Kampfmission teilnehmen durfte. Bourke-White war auch eine der ersten, die die Konzentrationslager dokumentierte. In diesem Buch schildert sie diese Ereignisse aus ihrer eigenen Perspektive. Die Einleitung des Buches beginnt mit einer Szene aus Luxemburg am 24. März 1945, als General Patton ein Stück Fallschirmstoff für Bourke-White zerriß, damit sie sich daraus ein Kleid schneidern konnte.

Die zweite Beitragende zu diesem Buch ist Lee Miller (1907-1977), die im Dezember 1942 als Fotojournalistin für Vogue begann über den Zweiten Weltkrieg zu berichten. Sie legte ihr früheres Leben als Modell (sie war auch Modell für Steichen) ab und begab sich an die Frontlinien des Krieges in Europa. Sie machte sogar Fotos in Luxemburg, einige davon wurden vom Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA) in Düdelingen erworben. In ihren Texten erzählt sie von ihrem Aufenthalt in Frankreich und Deutschland im Jahr 1944 sowie von ihrer Entdeckung der Konzentrationslager in Dachau im Jahr 1945. Ihr letzter Beitrag beschreibt ihren Aufenthalt in Hitlers Privatvilla in München, wo das berühmte Foto von ihr in der Badewanne entstand.

Die letzten Essays stammen von Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), die wie Miller ihr Leben in England beendete und die einzige professionelle Schriftstellerin des Trios ist. Sie war eine der ersten weiblichen Kriegsjournalistinnen und war kurzzeitig mit einem berühmten Schriftsteller verheiratet, wie auch Bourke-White. Ihre Berühmtheit wird oft auf ihre Ehe mit Ernest Hemingway reduziert, was ironisch ist, da sie äußerst unabhängig war und eine begabte Schriftstellerin in ihrem eigenen Recht. Gellhorns Texte stammen aus The Face of War und behandeln Italien, die Niederlande und Deutschland (Köln und Dachau).

In ihrer gründlichen Zusammenfassung stellt Bronfen fest, dass die drei Frauen geschickt waren, ihren Prominentenstatus zu nutzen, um als ernsthafte Berichterstatterinnen des Zweiten Weltkriegs anerkannt zu werden, und sich daher in Kampfausrüstung oder in Arbeitsumgebungen abbilden ließen. Sie kannten sich untereinander; Miller fotografierte die beiden anderen. Sie boten ihre eigene Sicht auf den Krieg dar. Als Miller während des Blitzes nach England zog, schickte sie Fotos an Vogue, die Mode und den Krieg kombinierten, was letztendlich dazu führte, dass sie das Magazin dazu brachte, weniger oberflächlich zu sein. Gellhorn hatte ebenfalls für Vogue Mode fotografiert und musste schließlich an Eleanor Roosevelt schreiben, um ihre Akkreditierung als Kriegskorrespondentin zu erhalten. Alle drei Frauen passierten schließlich Luxemburg.

La valise mexicaine : les négatifs retrouvés de la guerre civile espagnole (Cynthia Young)

Disponible en bibliothèque

Trois jeunes photographes de guerre, juifs d’Europe centrale venus de Budapest, de Stuttgart et de Varsovie, Robert Capa, sa compagne Gerda Taro, et David Seymour, alias Chim, ont laissé 4.500 négatifs dans de modestes boîtes, compartimentées et commentées au crayon. Sur les pellicules, des témoignages en images sur le sort des républicains espagnols. Cette boîte de négatifs qui raconte la guerre civile espagnole avait disparu en 1939 et fut repérée en 2007 au Mexique et finalement restituée à Cornell Capa, frère de Robert Capa et créateur de l’International Center of Photography (ICP) à New York. Le trio de photographes engagés Capa, Chim et Taro, laisse avec cet ensemble de négatifs un témoignage émouvant, des images saisissantes « d’actualité ». On y voit notamment des camps de réfugiés constitués de civils. De nombreuses photos de Gerda Taro, tuée à 27 ans lors de la bataille de Brunete (Espagne) en 1937, avaient été injustement attribuées à Capa et avec cette découverte, ce tort est redressé.

Vietnam Inc. (Philip Jones Griffiths)

Available at the library

One of the most famous books on the Vietnam war by a Welsh committed photojournalist, a Magnum member and even its president in 1980 for five years. Henri Cartier-Bresson stated: “Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths.” Griffiths returned to Vietnam 26 times after the conflict and this book is part of a trilogy with Agent Orange and Viet Nam at Peace. It is one of the more comprehensive records of a war and its consequences by a single photographer. He intended early on to make a book, as he sensed that “the things we were being told [about the war] didn’t make sense. So, I travelled the length of the country for my own personal selfish reasons, to put together the jigsaw puzzle, and to produce a historical document.” In this reprint of the 1971 original edition, Noam Chomsky sets the political American context of that time in a new foreword and commented on a separate occasion on its ongoing relevance: “If anybody in Washington had read that book, we wouldn’t have had these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.” The black and white images are gripping, alternating the horror of war with the humanity of the Vietnamese people. His insightful text adds the background history. Especially vivid are the clashes between the American and the Vietnamese culture, as in the picture of very young children being given the Playboy magazine to read. Griffiths’ took the focus away from the soldiers to uncover the consequences on the civilians. His book is unique and was out of print for many years, its success confirming the importance of engaged photojournalism.

Reporter de guerres (Yan Morvan, Aurélie Taupin)

Disponible en bibliothèque

Un livre fascinant dans les pas d’un photojournaliste français, qui nous tient toujours en haleine. Une vie trépidante, à la recherche de l’image qui fera mouche, que ce soit en couvrant les guerres ou en photographiant le pénaliste Vergès dans sa baignoire. On découvre le monde sans pitié des agences de photographies et l’âge d’or des magazines dans les années 1970-1990. En parallèle à ses photos de commande, il entreprend des reportages au long cours sur les marginaux, les prostituées, les blousons noirs, les gangs. Il sera le premier photographe à s’intéresser aux problèmes des banlieues et le livre finit sur ses projets en cours. Ce qui est notable c’est que ces projets ont finalement été publiés, Champs de batailles en 2015 sur les traces des lieux de batailles et Gangs Story en 2022, son travail sur les bandes en France de 1970 à nos jours.

 

Haines (Gilles Peress)

Disponible en bibliothèque

Membre de Magnum, le photographe français Gilles Peress observe la nature des conflits à la fin du 20e siècle et estime que les guerres du nouveau millénaire ressemblent aux conflits claniques du Moyen Âge. Depuis la chute du mur, il trouve qu’on est confronté à des nationalismes sans concessions. La haine du prochain est le fil conducteur dans ces images en noir et blanc prises en Irlande, aux Balkans et au Rwanda.

The violence of the image : photography and international conflict (Liam Kennedy et al.)

Available at the library

This book analyses all aspects of photojournalism in an era where new media technologies – internet, digital image production, satellite – has extended the circulation of conflict images. Social media and images taken with smartphones have also altered visual information and confront us with questioning the authenticity and traceability of the information. The essays combine case studies of individual conflicts and photographers and the more general issues facing the representation of violence in photography. The first contributions cover the “atrocity photographs” emerging from the Belgian Congo, Philip Jones Griffiths’ Vietnam, visual narratives of the Northern Ireland conflict and the work of three photographers on the Algerian civil war. The second part deals with the notion of “compassion fatigue”, the ideas developed from The Civil Contact of Photography by Azoulay, the theorization of photography’s relation to conflict. The third part addresses current conflicts, particularly in Libya and Afghanistan and the new dynamics of their representation by professional and citizen photojournalists. The final essays cover different manners to represent violence and to engage the audience, like “aftermath” photography or the focus on objects rather than people. The question of the gallery as a valid space to show documentary photography and photojournalism is also addressed. A very important and well written study.

A private war (dir. by Matthew Heineman)

Available in the Media Centre

We don’t always know the faces behind the photographs, but one war correspondent got famous because of the pictures of her with a patch on the eye. This film is a tribute to her courage and the toll that her profession took on her private life. She forms a team with British war photographer Paul Conroy, who was present during the shooting of this film. He was only injured in the artillery attack in Homs, Syria that claimed Marie Colvin’s life in 2012. He gave the actor Jamie Dornan, who portrays him on screen, a lot of valuable information. Rosamund Pike had to rely on Marie Colvin’s letters to get into her role. It a very engrossing film that shows the harsh reality behind the glamour of celebrity.

The Bang Bang Club (written and dir. by Steven Silver)

Available in the Media Centre

This film follows a group of four young white South African combat photographers nicknamed “The Bang Bang Club” in the turmoil of South Africa during the apartheid in the years 1990-1994. The South African director was an activist during that time and shot this movie on the scene where the real events took place. The film discloses the danger that the photographers confront in the black townships of Soweto because of the risks they take to show the reality. It also questions the moral aspect of taking pictures of dying people, as two of the most gruesome pictures win the Pulitzer Prize for photography. Death is the worst price that war photojournalists pay. But often even those who survive have after-effects. 33 years old Kevin Carter committed suicide two months after he got a Pulitzer for the iconic picture representing Sudan’s famine that showed a little girl fallen to ground while a vulture was observing. He was one of 4 members of the Bang Bang Club.

Which way is the front line from here? : the life and time of Tim Hetherington (dir. by Sebastian Junger)

Available in the Media Centre

The director of this documentary was embedded as a journalist with the photographer Tim Hetherington in the Korangal valley in Afghanistan. They lived on and off for 2 years with 20 American soldiers of the 2nd Platoon, as at the time in that area, it was also the only way to work as a journalist with some degree of safety. This experience was turned into a prize-winning documentary Restrepo (2010) by Hetherington and Junger. Tim Hetherington died April 20, 2011, in Misurata, Libya in a mortar attack at the age of 40 while covering the Libyan civil war. Junger made Which way is the front line from here? as a tribute to the recognized documentary photographer and filmmaker, who was also his friend. It includes numerous footage of Hetherington who is very endearing and funny and emotional sequences with his colleague journalist James Brabazon, his parents and his girlfriend. It also shows his maturing over the years and his humanitarian side. When most of his peers switched to digital, “he shot colour negative film on an analogue camera: 10 frames on each roll”. He conversed with the people he photographed and thus used a camera where he had to look down through the top. He preferred to work on longtime projects and was interested in the lives of this subjects, not only in witnessing events. He was still puzzled about war, especially intrigued by the “notion of performing gender in conflict”. “Defining your masculinity is part of the process [of war], you go to the front to prove yourself and you’’ll be rewarded. The same is true of photographers.” This documentary shows a photographer in action on the war scene, images you normally don’t see and that remind us of the risks someone takes to inform us correctly.

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