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War and Documentation by the Unflinching Camera, April 11, 2009
This review is from: The Eye of War: Words and Photographs from the Front Line (Hardcover)
THE EYE OF WAR is a haunting collection of scenes from the battlefields of over 150 years of wars throughout the world. In John Keegan's Introduction to this portfolio he presents a thorough survey of the effects of war on the soldiers and the targets and explains how both are victims of the war machine. What makes this collection so important, so visceral, and so heartbreaking is that it follows wars along with the invention of the camera. Before the camera came into being in the early 19th century battles were the subject of painters and sketchers. But in 1855 the 'new' camera was carried onto the battlefields and suddenly the 'romanticized version' of war as seen in paintings evaporated: these are moments captured during the heat of battle and the shocking aftermath of the devastation war creates.
Writer/commentator/editor Phillip Knightley opens the book with the first known use of the camera at battle: the Crimean war of 1854 (Britain and France declared war on Russia) is depicted by near still lifes of soldiers in uniform and landscapes of the war. From there the photographs become more graphic with images from the Third Opium War, the Indian mutiny, and the American Civil War. Many of Matthew Brady's famous photographs are placed by excerpts of writers who observed the tragedy. The book then moves through the Imperial Expansion with images from the colonial wars in Africa, frontier wars, and the Spanish-American war that span the latter half of the 19th century. At the turn of the century that Knightly ominously terms the period 'Rehearsals for Armageddon 1900 - 1914' photographs and commentary from the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Mexican Revolution lead into the First World War and the collection gains momentum: battlefields are spread before us in double-page form alongside intimate images of individuals both in battle and on the home front all weeping over the destruction of years of architectural history as well as lives.
'A Short Intermission 1918 - 39' follows the Russian revolution, Italy's invasion of Abyssinia and the Spanish Civil War before the harrowing images of World War II fill the pages. Famous and anonymous photographs force the reader to recall the dichotomy between the pacifists and warmongers and the resulting images are terrifying to visit. Knightley then covers the period from 1945 - 1994 under the title Independence Wars - Korea, Indochina, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Latin America, the Falklands, and Africa - and for those of us who have lived through these wars (particularly the heinous Vietnam War) these images are difficult to view, as well they should be. Photographers focused more on the horrors of the ruin of human life and the effects on soldiers torn by the atrocities they viewed daily.
The book closes with 'Conflicts of Faith 1948 - 2003', covering Israel's Independence War, the Yom Kippur War, as well as the wars in Algeria, Suez, Lebanon, Chechnya, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and into the Iran-Iraq war and Gulf War to the present day continuing Iraq War. If any reader has misgivings about the 'correctness' of the Iraq War these images and comments should alter perception. In a book filled with 200 images in both black and white and color perhaps one of the most touching is a photograph of The Sarajevo String Quartet performing in the ruins of the National Library in 1994. It sums up the absurdity of war and the indomitable spirit of those who survive to go on. One can almost hear the music of Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time' recalling the Holocaust of years earlier. Books such as this belong in the libraries of all those who care about the need for peace. This is a singularly powerful statement that should be re-visited often. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp,April 09
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