I’ve been fascinated for many years with the story of photography in war. Not in a morbid way, I’m very much the pacifist, but the way war has been and is represented through photography. I suspect, also because I once read Michael Herr’s book “Dispatches”. Michael Herr is an American writer and war correspondent who wrote about the Vietnam war. The British photographer, Tim Page gets mentioned extensively in the opening chapters.
It has often been said that the use of images from the war in Vietnam, such as Eddie Adam’s Saigon Execution Photograph and the image of Kim Phuc were responsible for the public disquiet which ultimately lead to America’s withdrawal from Vietnam. Which just goes to show the power that an image can have, and convey.
I get involved with a local series of talks in Brighton about photography, Miniclick. The Miniclick Photography talks are a series of monthly, free photography and film-making events based in Brighton, often followed by discussions about the nature of photography and ideas relating to photography rather than the “technical aspects, i.e. cameras” . Often thought provoking and insightful.
I attended a screening recently of a film “WHICH WAY IS THE FRONTLINE FROM HERE?“. A documentary about the life of Tim Hetherington, a British photographer sadly killed in Libya in 2011.
What impressed me most was getting the back story to Tim Hetherington and seeing some of the work he did in his early days as a photo-journalist. Especially a project he undertook in Liberia entitled Healing Sport What came across so profoundly was the humanity inherent in his work. Reminiscent in many ways, of the humanity that comes through the body of work produced by Don McCullin