The War Photo No One Would Publish

[Christopher O'Brien]

[Excellent article that asks the burning question, when is enough enough, and when is not enough, detrimental to public awareness? —chris]

Article HERE:

[From The Atlantic by Torie DeGhett 8.8.14]
The Iraqi soldier died attempting to pull himself up over the dashboard of his truck. The flames engulfed his vehicle and incinerated his body, turning him to dusty ash and blackened bone. In a photograph taken soon afterward, the soldier’s hand reaches out of the shattered windshield, which frames his face and chest. The colors and textures of his hand and shoulders look like those of the scorched and rusted metal around him. Fire has destroyed most of his features, leaving behind a skeletal face, fixed in a final rictus. He stares without eyes.

On February 28, 1991, Kenneth Jarecke stood in front of the charred man, parked amid the carbonized bodies of his fellow soldiers, and photographed him…The image and its anonymous subject might have come to symbolize the Gulf War. Instead, it went unpublished in the United States, not because of military obstruction but because of editorial choices…

The U.S. military has now abandoned the pool system [for reporters in a war zone] it used in 1990 and 1991, and the Internet has changed the way photos reach the public… Some have argued that showing bloodshed and trauma repeatedly and sensationally can dull emotional understanding. But never showing these images in the first place guarantees that such an understanding will never develop. “Try to imagine, if only for a moment, what your intellectual, political, and ethical world would be like if you had never seen a photograph,” author Susie Linfield asks in The Cruel Radiance, her book on photography and political violence. Photos like Jarecke’s not only show that bombs drop on real people; they also make the public feel accountable. As David Carr wrote in The New York Times in 2003, war photography has “an ability not just to offend the viewer, but to implicate him or her as well.”

As an angry 28-year-old Jarecke wrote in American Photo in 1991: “If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.”

 

[stonehart]

Bump... lets keep this on the front page shall we?

Thanks for posting Chris.

 

[Wade]

"As an angry 28-year-old Jarecke wrote in American Photo in 1991: “If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.”

*THIS^^^^*

did i do that right ?

 

[Wade]

Here's another famous/infamous war photo that also has caused some controversy, but mostly because there are those who think it was staged.

 

[Bob Watson]

war is hell-U.S. Grant

 

[DissectionStalker]

The naked Vietnamese napalm child wandering aimlessly crying on that muddy bloody dirty road...



That changed the meaning of War forever!

 

[Randall]

Here's a key quote:

" ... sanitized images of warfare, The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf argues, make it 'easier … to accept bloodless language' such as 1991 references to 'surgical strikes' or modern-day terminology like 'kinetic warfare.' "​

This begs the question: Why would we want to make the horror easier to accept? To sell more magazines, more newspapers, the war itself? All of the above? Here's another quote that really hits home:

"Flipping through 23-year-old issues, Kramer expresses clear distaste at the editorial quality of what she helped to create. The magazines “were very sanitized,” she says. “So, that’s why these issues are all basically just propaganda.” She points out the picture on the cover of the February 25 issue: a young blond boy dwarfed by the American flag he’s holding. “As far as Americans were concerned,” she remarks, “nobody ever died.”
​

Now let's enlarge the three words that say it all:

"... basically just propaganda ..."​

 

[boomerang]

Images of war should never be filtered, suppressed or sanitized. It exists in human nature as a kind of duality: A fantasy of all that is noble and the reality of all that is reprehensible. Our only hope is continually reminding ourselves of its true nature.

 

[stonehart]

We have been killing each other since the dawn of time .. and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.

 

[Wade]

The naked Vietnamese napalm child wandering aimlessly crying on that muddy bloody dirty road...



That changed the meaning of War forever!

i was also thinking about using that photo. Here is a recent laweekly article on the man that took that photo.

Nick Ut's Napalm Girl Helped End the Vietnam War. Today in L.A., He's Still Shooting | Features | Los Angeles | Los Angeles News and Events | LA Weekly

I believe somewhere... I'll need to reread it.. in the article this photograph was attributed to help ending the war. I don't know if I agree with that assessment, but I was all of 11 years old at the time and singularly immersed in baseball yet this photo shook me to the core.

 

[Burnt State]

The naked Vietnamese napalm child wandering aimlessly crying on that muddy bloody dirty road...

That changed the meaning of War forever!

I met Kim Phuc at my school and a student had painted a painting of her in tribute of her in contemporary time, a very colourful and beautiful headshot with a greyscale depiction of the photo of her naplamed & naked in the street running for her life in the background. She autographed the painting with the following phrase,
"No more violence.
No more Kim.
No more war.
Kim Phuc"
In speaking with her afterwards she explained that there should not have to be a need for symbols like her or that famous shocking image to end war, but that we should just do it because we are all human beings.

 

[truthseeker]

War is an absolute hell. I don't think anybody can argue with that.

 

[AlienEsq]

War is a necessary evil, but the children need not be involved.

When Bill Clinton was in office, he had an opportunity to wipe Osama bin Laden off the face of the Earth but chose to avoid the bloodshed of innocent women and children instead. Otherwise, we may have several more of these sad photographs to remember the effects of war by.

It's interesting to me that similar photographs go relatively unreleased this day and age. Perhaps, despite the advancements of the internet, the government is still managing to censor these images to avoid bad press. I'm probably stating the obvious.

 

[manxman]

Alienesq, you seem a good bloke, so dont take this personally, but your posting above about bill suck my dick clinton nearly made me spew my coffee over my keyboard, because it is absurd.

Clinton the oops ive just cum on your shoes humanitarian, funny funny shit, tell it too the families of the innocent men killed working in a factory he 'cruise missiled to rubble' to cynically keep himself off the next morning's front pages , that were about him getting a gobble from monica,

 

[Charlie Prime]

War is a necessary evil, but the children need not be involved.

Bullcrap.

War is no more necessary than rapes and muggings are necessary.

Wars are nothing but rich people using their human cattle to fight other rich people for natural resources. You should stop helping them by claiming that wars are "necessary".

 

[Jeff Crowell]

War is 100% necessary, either from an aggressor stand point ( "We need breeding room") or from a defender stand point. It's human nature to want other peoples' stuff so now and again we get people in charge who try to come and take it. The defender's either fight back or let themselves be overcome. I think Decker's signature says it all, really.

There will always be war, and it will always be completely necessary. Call it evil or futilely argue that it's "not" necessary, but it'll keep coming....for whatever the reasons.

 

[Charlie Prime]

War is 100% necessary...It's human nature to want other peoples' stuff

I see. You won't mind when I come to your house and take your stuff, because it's 100% necessary. Just "Human Nature".

I'll be sure to remind you of your opinion if you complain when I kick in your door and put your TV on a dolly and take your wife. If you continue to complain, I will remind you again by smashing you in the face with the butt of my rifle.

 

[manxman]

Sheesh, i didnt realise Charlie was a policeman.

 

[AlienEsq]

Alienesq, you seem a good bloke, so dont take this personally, but your posting above about bill suck my dick clinton nearly made me spew my coffee over my keyboard, because it is absurd.

Clinton the oops ive just cum on your shoes humanitarian, funny funny shit, tell it too the families of the innocent men killed working in a factory he 'cruise missiled to rubble' to cynically keep himself off the next morning's front pages , that were about him getting a gobble from monica,

Not taking this personal (this is the internet after all), but I would like to explain that my example was merely that: an example. I certainly don't intend to label Bill Clinton a humanitarian by any means, only that, in this one particular instance, innocent lives were spared.

I will also admit that I nearly choked on my own tongue when I read your message after having mistaken it for my own. I typed my message rather late at night and briefly thought I used some of the same language you used to describe Bill Clinton. What a relief.

Good times.

 

[AlienEsq]

Bullcrap.

War is no more necessary than rapes and muggings are necessary.

Wars are nothing but rich people using their human cattle to fight other rich people for natural resources. You should stop helping them by claiming that wars are "necessary".

I do not intend to make light of your position, only to better understand it. What is your own experience with war that causes you to have this position?

Now, I recognize that I cannot simply ask you this question without first providing the basis for my own position, so here it goes.

The basis of my position that war is a necessary evil comes from my experience as a History major and my personal experience as an American citizen. Specifically, I have studied several different historical time periods where war was determined to be absolutely necessary to avoid a greater evil, such as the Romans, Egyptians, and dictators such as Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. Where would the world be without the union of nations warring against these evil individuals and empires? Likely no good place at all. Christians, Jews, and other religious groups would be wiped off the planet without a response to this unchecked aggression.

In addition, without war, expansion of nations and trade groups to the Western hemisphere would never have occured. War, and the need to oppose war, forced American colonists to challenge the British and, in the face of a slave labor economy and battle over state's rights, one another.

Finally, war as we know it and the internal struggles it creates, has defined our popular culture and defined its necessary place within that culture. Video games, television, and movies further aid in defining it.

So I ask you: what would ever become of The Dude if he decided not to confront the intruders who peed on his rug?

That rug really tied the room together, did it not.