Introduction on war photography
The twentieth century is unarguably the bloodiest century in human history with death tolls from politically motivated conflicts between 175 and 200 million worldwide.
War photography involves capturing conflicts, violence and the effect it has on civilians and scenery. Many photographers are willing to risk their lives to record reality of war and report it back to the rest of us.
History has shown us the importance of war photography, and we can see this through the photos taken, for example during the Vietnam war from1965, many American men were sent to Vietnam to fight in a war without knowing why; all they thought was that they were fighting for a better future for themselves and next generations.
its very important to document the history throughout the time, photos are the proof for the stories of the wars, so later generations learn not only in words about past wars, but also in images that portray the reality of that time wither its harsh or not; words can be changed and manipulated however images cannot be, it shows you the dry truth, you either take it or leave it and stay in denial.
For me, I see war photographers no other different than soldiers, they are the same with each holding a different weapon.
Catherine Leroy was a French photojournalist and war photographer
born in 1944.
In 1966, 21 year old Catherine Leroy booked a one way ticket to Vietnam with only a hundred dollars in pocket and a brand new Leica M2 with very limited professional portfolio; she covered the north Vietnamese war by documenting American troops in Vietnam, parachuting in combat operation and being published on the covers of major magazines, including Life.
She covered the war for almost two years, Leroy was the only non-military photographer and only woman to make a parachute jump in combat with US in Vietnam.
She was also the first woman to win many awards for her war photography; its very impressive and courageous considering this at the time in the 1960’s when women’s liberation movements were still emerging.
Her most famous series of photographs from war in Vietnam are “ corpsman in anguish “ :
he was a Marine, in may 1967, this marine became very famous and he also made Leroy very famous, his name was Vernan Wike, he was a medic, his face was wrenched in torment, hunched over the body of his friend while smoke from the battle rises behind them
after she took this series of photographs a number of mothers were convinced that it was their son and she had to check with a company in order to identify him.
This story was particularly strong and had a big impact on people .
In 2005 she was sent to Arizona for a reunion with Vernon Wike in what would be her last photo assignment.
“ when you look at war photographs, it’s a silent moment of eternity. But for me, its haunted by sound, a deafening sound. In Vietnam most of the time it was extremely exhausting and boring, you walked for miles through rice paddies or jungle, walking, crawling, in the most unbearable circumstances and nothing was happening and then suddenly all hell would break loose “
-catherine Leroy “ a window on the war “ Los Angeles Times – December 8th 2002
Embedded with the US marines in Vietnam she would accompany them on countless operations. Sharing their everyday life in the heat and mud of the jungle, she produced extraordinary photographic coverages showing the violence, pain and heroism of battle.
A marine screams in pain, operation praire, near the DMZ.
It was very hard for Leroy to photograph dead bodies and people who were going to die, she avoided photographing dead soldiers or the ones whom were going to die in order to protect their privacy claiming in one of her interviews in 1985
“ its something I could never do “ .
Despite her many strong images, Ms. Leroy remained relatively unknown, partly because she wasn’t a self promoter and partly because women photographers have often been excluded from the medium’s history, especially in war photography.
She has faced no shortage of sexism, after she parachuted into combat during an operation, rumors calculated that she had slept with a colonel in exchange for permission, whereas in fact she had earned her parachutist license at the age of 18 and had already jumped 84 times, still, she developed a reputation as a photographer quickly.
Catherine Leroy with the 173rd airborne brigade in a combat jump, photographing the jump as she made it
Leroy and another French photographer were captured by Vietnamese soldiers in the Battle Of Hue, her captors took away their cameras and tied them up.
A priest whom was under house arrest, translated Catherine’s insistence that they were French journalists, and somehow managed to convince them that she didn’t work for the Americans.
On 19 may 1967 while photographing Operation Hickory with a marine unit near the Vietnamese demilitarized zone she was severely injured by peoples army of Vietnam mortar fire, Leroy would later credit a camera with saving her life by stopping some of the shrapnel.
She returned to Saigon in mid-april 1975 not as a reporter, but to witness the Fall Of Saigon, the independence of Vietnam :
Fall Of Saigon, civilians fleeing, April 29th, 1975, Catherine leroy
Fall Of Saigon, civilians fleeing, April 29th, 1975, Catherine leroy
Liberation of Saigon, Topple of the statue of the Vietnamese, May 5, 1975
Later in her life, Leroy ran a vintage clothing website and passed away in 2006 after one week of getting diagnosed with lung cancer.
Sir Don McCullin is a British photojournalist recognized for his war photography, born in 1935, he was just 14 when his father died, his mother was dominant and violent sometimes; during his national service with Britains Royal Airforce he was posted to Suez, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus, gaining experience as a darkroom assistant, later he bought a Rolliecord camera for 30 pounds in Kenya.
McCullin started working at The Observer Magazine as a photographer, in 1964 The Observer asked him if he would like to cover the civil war in Cyprus, it was his first real invasion into a conflict zone and the photographs he produced were remarkable and are still considered some of his finest work which led him into the international arena of photojournalism.
McCullin admits to overlooking one of his most famous and iconic Vietnam images, the close up of a shell-shocked American soldier, arriving back from Vietnam exhausted, he was in a hurry for a deadline. “ I was too busy looking for the action pictures and missed it, it taught me a lesson “.
McCullin produced his finest magazine work, placing him alongside Robert Capa and Philip Jones Griffiths as one of the best war photographers ever.
He has a particular eye, he worked best in extreme situations on social stories about human condition.
He didn’t shoot new stories but more of a personal view of the conflict, not what happened, but what it was like.
He is much taken with a phrase used about the legendary Magnum photographer Eugene Smith who was described as having “ nerve ends hanging out of his fingertips “. He worries that himself lacks an appropriate sense of feeling. “ when I see terrible things, I don’t always get upset, its an emotional weakness “ he concludes.
McCullin went into conflict zones with little equipment in a low key way. He learnt quickly how to save himself from tricky situations and how to smuggle his film out if necessary; he always knew when to leave and when to stay.
“ a sense of timing is the most important part of the life of a professional photographer “ McCullin said, “ I have an uncanny way of being at the right place at the right time and if the time is not right I can be patient, stay in that place for hours willing for things to come. “
This photo was taken in a small village in Cyprus in 1964, this woman is Turkish and is grieving the loss of her husband. Her young son is reaching up to console her.
“ I discovered that middle-eastern people express their grief very vividly, a very outward display of mourning. I hoped that what I captured in my photographs would be an enduring image that would imprint itself on the world’s memory. “ said McCullin.
McCullin is a film man and loves kodak Tri-X. until 2012 he started using Canon 5D cameras and continues to use them alongside his medium and large format film cameras today.
For more than 50 years he used a 35mm film camera with his favorite focal lengths 28mm and 135mm lenses.
He shoots his war photography in black and white, claiming “we don’t live in a black and white world, but once you see a black and white photograph, it haunts you. I have done a few pictures of war in colour but they don’t work – they feel too cosy – while black and white photographs will penetrate your memory.
Da Nang, Vietnam 1969
The negative of this image has been damaged that it remained unpublished.
This priest is hearing the confessions of the soldiers before they go into the battle.
McCullin gambles on his own life all the time, he always wanted to get the composition right but has no time, he has to get the picture; he was also worried about the exposure, there were just so many things going on and always put his hands into fate.
He’s dealing with a 125th of a second – it’s a blink of an eyelid; he tries to foresee things and always be two steps ahead, his mind has been sharpened like a pencil and trained to act quickly
Although he is still always under pressure and worried.
Lebanon, east Beirut 1976
This young boy is playing on a stolen lute. He is celebrating with his friends as if at a picnic in front of the dead body of a Palestinian girl in puddles of rain.
Only minutes earlier McCullin had been told to stop taking pictures or he would be killed.
The boy called into him and said “ hey Mistah ! Mistah ! come take photo “, frightened for his life he shot two frames and soon after, he learned that the Christian phalange had put out a death warrant for him for taking this photo.
Baji, Iraq 2015
Hashd al-Shaabi militia members after taking control of oilfields that were hit by US air strikes and seized from the Islamic state.
Here was the second time McCullin used a digital camera ( canon 5D mark III ) for a conflict commission.
To capture those images, McCullin risked his life on many occasions, he was shot and wounded in Cambodia, expelled from Vietnam, had a bounty on his head in Lebanon and imprisoned in Uganda. Hes also braved bullets and bombs not only to get the perfect shot but to help wounded civilians and dying soldiers.
Compassion and emotion are at the heart of all his photojournalism work.
His body being in pain from arthritis and having eye trouble, a curse for a photographer, worse he suffered a stroke in 2009 and that restricted his devotion for photography.
He was married 3 times, his first wife committed suicide, now he is 86 and has 5 children.
In November 2000 it was announced that anjelina jolie would be directing a biopic about McCullin, it is being adapted from McCullin autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour by Gregory Burke.
William Eugene Smith was born in December 30th 1918 in Wichita, Kansos, he was an American photojournalist, his major essays include world war ii photographs.
Smith was introduced to photography by his mother, she lent him her camera at the age of 13 and by the time he was a teenager photography had become his passion.
His childhood was “ typical “ until his father committed suicide during Smith’s senior year in high school.
At the age of 18 he moved to new York city and had begun to work for Newsweek and in 1939 he began to work for Life magazine.
While working for Life, Smith was assigned as a war correspondent, he took photos on the front lines in the pacific theater of world war ii and spent 3 years covering the pacific war, his most dramatic photographs were taken during the invasion of Okinawa in April 1945.
he became legendary for his emotional and truthful images; it was important for Smith to photograph the war with heart and preciseness, he photographed 26 missions and 13 invasions in the Pacific and Europe.
American army nurse Florence Vehmeier and wounded IG in a makeshift hospital, Leyte, the Philippines, 1944/ Life picture collection.
Smith took chances like no other photographer took before, he took them in order to get the photographs that would show people what was war like.
here Eugene Smith takes a self portrait in the sargent uniform in a minefield with the explosion, he was knocked down, he gets up and says that he wants to do it again because it wasn’t right, so they reset the whole thing up again and this time he got closer to explosions and literally blew himself up.
He was known for being crazy and takes risks for the sake of his photographs.
Eugene Smith, world war II. The pacific campaign, the battle of Iwo Jima
( Japanese island ). US Marine demolition team blasting out a cave on Hill 382, February 1945.
The reason Smith covered the war, he wanted his pictures to carry some message against the greed and stupidity that cause these wars and the breaking of many bodies.
WW ii, the Pacific Campaign. Battle of Saipan Island Japanese civilians emerging from hiding. Saipan Islands June 1944, Eugene Smith
Smith shot on a 35mm films, a camera of a humble birth, the Minolta SRT – 101, these cameras are considered unspectacular to many and worth a little.
Even though he was an unceasing perfectionist in his craft, due to constant financial troubles Smith was known for using whatever camera happens to be lying around.
In the light of this, Minolta company gave Smith a camera and lenses in exchange for TV ad appearances.
Eugene Smith didn’t only shoot war on land, moreover he shot war in the air and ocean.
W. Eugene Smith WW II. The Pacific campaign | US navy avenger fighter bomber, belonging to
the USS Bunker Hill aircraft carrier, drops its load on the Marshall Islands, occupied by the Japanese, January-February 1944 .
Eugene Smith WW II. The Pacific Campaign. Battle of Saipan island, US avenger fighter bombers moving towards the Saipan island, to attack the Japanese. Saipan island, June 194
W. Eugene Smith WWII. The Pacific campaign. Battle of Saipan island. US Marine holding a wounded and dying baby found in the mountains, Saipan Island, June, 1944.
here they heard a tiny muffled cry and then see the body riving, it took 5 minutes to carefully free the head, the baby was passed from hand to hand until it reached level ground.
His work was interrupted in 1945 during an invasion, his face and hands were severely injured by a grenade, after 2 painful years of multiple surgeries Smith could barely hold a camera,
“ the day I again tried for the first time to make a photograph, I could barely load the roll of film into the camera. Yet I was determined that the first photograph would be a contrast to the war photographs and that it would speak an affirmation of life… “
His first photograph after his injury was of his two
young children emerging from dark wooded area :
It was titled – The Walk to Paradise Garden
E. Eugene Smith, world war II. The pacific campaign, the battle of Iwo Jima ( Japanese island ). US Marine demolition team blasting out a cave on Hill 382, February 1945.
* Summary
Looking at those three photographers the most important and common thing between them was their courage and bravery, they risked their lives to document history and photograph such harsh realities which I am sure it affected them somehow emotionally and mentally later in their life, these are memories they cannot erase and goes with them till forever.
For them gear wasn’t very important, they all focused on the story, capturing the moment before it was gone hence this comes with a lot of patience, they went on wars for years but there were times where they only waited and waited until there was something for them to photograph.
Something about war photography was very addictive to them and I can understand this feeling, they were very passionate photographers and no matter what happened weather they got injured or hit, they still chose to get back to the fields even if its years later after their recovery.
Having the privilege to document history is very powerful and something that will stay forever, it will teach future generations a lot indeed.
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