donderdag, april 03, 2003
Are you confused by the bombardment of television video tracking every military incident, by correspondents relating their personal experiences, by experts analyzing everything to death? Take my advice: Look at the still photographs.
Most TV images are fleeting, gone in a matter of seconds. What one needs is to study them, think about them, and figure out what they mean. Still photographs allow us to do that. Susan Sontag, who recently wrote a new book about photography, says that photographs have the ability to sum up a war. A single, haunting picture gives us a way of remembering the event that has taken place.
The image has more impact when the desperation in the people's faces is frozen on the page. So do the photos of the refugees, squatting in the dirt, their eyes showing anxiety and fear, as they wait to be cleared to move past a checkpoint. And while we know that women soldiers are fighting in Iraq, it's brought home in the still pictures - a female Marine who's carrying a rifle and is practically dwarfed by all her gear, and a group of women sailors laughing aboard a naval ship on which 10 percent of the crew are women.
Still photographs have the power to "haunt us." So if you're trying to get a grip on this war, I suggest that you turn off the TV, that you stop reading about it for a day or two, and that you look simply at the photographs. They will help you think about what's going on and about what it's worth in the end.
Sheryl McCarthy in Newsday.
Most TV images are fleeting, gone in a matter of seconds. What one needs is to study them, think about them, and figure out what they mean. Still photographs allow us to do that. Susan Sontag, who recently wrote a new book about photography, says that photographs have the ability to sum up a war. A single, haunting picture gives us a way of remembering the event that has taken place.
The image has more impact when the desperation in the people's faces is frozen on the page. So do the photos of the refugees, squatting in the dirt, their eyes showing anxiety and fear, as they wait to be cleared to move past a checkpoint. And while we know that women soldiers are fighting in Iraq, it's brought home in the still pictures - a female Marine who's carrying a rifle and is practically dwarfed by all her gear, and a group of women sailors laughing aboard a naval ship on which 10 percent of the crew are women.
Still photographs have the power to "haunt us." So if you're trying to get a grip on this war, I suggest that you turn off the TV, that you stop reading about it for a day or two, and that you look simply at the photographs. They will help you think about what's going on and about what it's worth in the end.
Sheryl McCarthy in Newsday.
# posted by Jan-Edward : 19:13
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