I debated whether to make this a comment on Jack Rakosky's post on War and Peace in 2018, but decided it would be more appropriate to start a new thread on the subject of photo journalism of war. A couple of things prompted this post. The first was Pope Francis' unprecedented printing of a prayer card with the photo of victims of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/31/europe/pope-francis-nagasaki-photo/index.html. The photo is 72 years old but is currently relevant because of the aggravated threat of nuclear war at present. It is the picture of a young boy carrying his dead brother on his back to the crematorium.
The other thing prompting my post was an article I read in Guideposts Magazine by Kim Phuc Phan Thi. She was the 9 year old girl, a victim of napalm bombing, photographed by Nick Ut, a photographer for AP. The article doesn't appear to be available online, but this gives an outline of her story: http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2017/october/redemption-45-years-later-vietnam-wars-napalm-girl-shares-her-journey-to-christ.
The Guidepost article made the point that the photo, widely published at the time, may have helped end the war.
And here is a good discussion of the role of photo journalism in the Vietnam War: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/vietnam-war-photos-that-made-a-difference/
Mention is made of the journalists and photographers who have lost their lives reporting on wars. I was surprised (or maybe not so much) that Nixon had made a comment that the photo of Kim Phuc Phan Thi was probably faked. I guess the "fake journalism" label isn't altogether a new thing. Fortunately she remained alive to tell her story. The role of journalism, especially photo journalism, remains one of the primary ways that the truth about the consequences of war is brought home to the public.
Photo journalists capture what is true and present the truth in images that make a strong impression on the viwer. The photo journalist's images confront the viewer with truth - sometimes an uncomfortable or unwelcome truth.
ReplyDeletePoliticians like President Nixon or President Trump who find the truth inconvenient try to argue or wish it away by denying its veracity.
I really think that, as never before, we Christians must renew our commitment to the truth. That means:
* Speaking truth
* Accepting as true what is true
* Being open to reconsidering our preconceptions and preferences when made aware of truth that complicates or challenges it.
I am sorry to say that this approach and attitude would mark us as counter-cultural.
The piece on Vietnam photography alludes to something I was surprised to learn long after World War II: It was not until September, 1943 -- 21 months after the carnage of Pearl Harbor -- that an American publication printed a photo of American combat dead:
ReplyDeletehttp://time.com/3524493/the-photo-that-won-world-war-ii-dead-americans-at-buna-beach-1943/
(Ignore their over-the-top headline.)
Until Vietnam, we did like our wars gallant and clean with only the enemy suffering. When photos of GI POWs appeared at the end of the war, we were shocked, shocked at what they had obviously gone through.
Hmm, as I recall, the Brady photographs of the Civil War showed dead from both sides. Brady exhibited them in his shop window to attract customers. They were also distributed as engravings.
DeleteNBC has a squib that notes these photos had some impact on the public conscience at the time: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42531908/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/how-civil-war-photography-changed-war/
It would be interesting to see how war photography was handled in WWI, given the previous impact of Brady's work. WWI was a very propaganda driven war (Edward Bernays) and I would expect strong censorship followed. There were anti-sedition laws that put Eugene Debs in jail. As I've always felt, we should have stayed out and let the European powers fight to exhaustion without victors, hopefully. Then maybe it would have been "lesson learned".
DeleteJean, I should have been clearer: I was referring to WWII dead, not all American wars.
DeleteStanley, I would be interested in the treatment of bodies in WWI photos, too. After that war a large-sized volume of photos in sepia was issued. I spent many hours with that as a lad, but what I remember now is more mud than bodies. And the facial hair on the muckeymucks of both sides.
Jean - my father has a Civil War book at his home that has many hand-drawn illustrations of battle scenes. Many of them appeared in newspapers and magazines of the period. To Tom's point, they showed their side as gallant and clean, with infantry charges showing men in clean uniforms keeping perfect rank as they engaged the enemy. Cavalry officers invariably sat ramrod-straight on their horses, with swords raised high as they exhorted their men. It amounted to a form of propaganda. Presumably it is what the readers wanted.
DeleteJim, yes, if you look at monuments and photographs taken of soldiers before going off to war, you have a highly romantic and sentimentalized view of what it was all about. If you look at various tributes to our "warrior heroes," that idea of the ennobling nature of fighting a war is still alive and well.
DeleteWe still want to believe that those are the fruits of war, not that poor child taking his brother to a crematory. Or the many veterans I have had as students struggling with their PTSD and fighting with the VA. Heck, we got caught up in it when our niece was on the road to Baghdad during the early days of the war in Iraq.
We seem ever willing to appropriate other people's nightmares and twist them into something we can live with.
Jean -- "We seem ever willing to appropriate other people's nightmares and twist them into something we can live with."
DeleteGreat insight.