tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/war-photography-83545/articles
War photography – The Conversation
2023-11-08T16:41:30Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216508
2023-11-08T16:41:30Z
2023-11-08T16:41:30Z
Three images that show wartime photographs can have greater impact than the written word
<p><em>This article contains images that some may finding distressing, including of torture.</em></p>
<p>“Images are worth a thousand words. These images <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/nato-ministers-shown-horrific-video-hamas-attack-2023-10-12/">may be worth a million</a>.” US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s response to being shown graphic images of the victims of Hamas’s recent massacre raises an important question about whether photographs are more powerful than words in conveying the brutality of war. </p>
<p>Since the announcement of its <a href="https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/photographpreservationprogram/harvards-history-photography-timeline-text-only">invention in 1839</a>, photography has been imagined as a form of “writing with light” (referring to the meanings of the Greek words <em>phos</em> and <em>graphe</em> from which it is derived).</p>
<p>Writing in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1862/10/20/archives/bradys-photographs-pictures-of-the-dead-at-antietam.html">New York Times</a> in 1862, Oliver Wendell Holmes reflected on photographs taken after the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Antietam">Battle of Antietam</a> during the US civil war: “We see the list [of those killed in battle] in the morning paper at breakfast but dismiss its recollection with the coffee.” By contrast, it was as if the photographer had “brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets”. </p>
<p>In a globalised and fast-moving media landscape, photographs are more efficient than words. They can be <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2014/in-the-blink-of-an-eye-0116">absorbed in an instant</a> and apparently transcend barriers of language. The notion of photography as a universal language has been around since photography’s origins <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/776511">and, despite criticism,</a> <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/jrs.8.1.43">remains powerful</a>.</p>
<p>As the documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado put it: “I can write in photography — and you can read it in China, <a href="https://blog.ted.com/the-language-of-photography-qa-with-sebastiao-salgado/">in Canada, in Brazil, anywhere</a>.”</p>
<p>Photographs have worked alongside words to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1750635210356813">substantiate written reports on war</a> on the basis that the mechanically produced images provide an objective and neutral record of reality. </p>
<p>Numerous scholars, however, have debunked this and shown how <a href="https://access.portico.org/Portico/auView?auId=ark:%2F27927%2Fphz3m9b08t">the camera can indeed lie</a>. Wartime photographs can be <a href="https://www.roots-routes.org/il-partito-preso-delle-cosethe-mother-from-estremadura-and-the-idea-of-a-photographic-icondi-erika-zerwes/">used for propaganda purposes</a>. Yet, even in the era of digital and AI-enhanced imagery, the idea that photography reveals the truth persists. </p>
<p>Lucy’s <a href="https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/martyrdom-in-the-age-of-mechanical-reproduction-the-photograph-as">research has explored</a> how this perception of photography as evidence was harnessed for propaganda purposes during Mexico’s <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/4295/chapter-abstract/146187227?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Cristero War (1926-29)</a>, a struggle which saw Catholics rise up against a series of government policies curbing religious freedoms. </p>
<p>Catholic propagandists disseminated real <a href="https://mavcor.yale.edu/mavcor-journal/object-narratives/photographic-postcard-commemorating-antonio-ver-stegui">photographs of slain priests and militants</a>, both in Mexico and abroad, as proof of federal violence. This created <a href="https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/martyrdom-in-the-age-of-mechanical-reproduction-the-photograph-as">narratives of martyrdom</a> that would galvanise support for the rebellion.</p>
<p>The most enduring photograph of this kind is the <a href="http://cehm.org.mx/Buscador/VisorArchivoDigital?jzd=/janium/JZD/CDLXXXV/26/5/CDLXXXV.26.5.jzd&fn=431662">striking image of the Jesuit priest Miguel Pro</a> who was executed without trial in 1927 on suspicion of attempting to assassinate former president Álvaro Obregón, despite limited evidence. </p>
<p>In his final moments before the firing squad Pro assumed the pose of Christ on the cross, converting his body into a symbol of non-violent Catholic resistance. The publication of the photograph in the mainstream media <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Miguel_Pro/hn4SDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">sparked Catholic outrage</a> around the world in 1927 and continues to circulate today.</p>
<p>Some of the most powerful photographs from wartime have catalysed fierce debate on the justification of conflict. Here are three examples.</p>
<h2>1. Liberation of concentration camps (1945)</h2>
<p>Journalists have turned to the camera when words seem incapable of describing the most extreme wartime atrocities. This was the experience of US and British reporters covering the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography">Allied liberation of the concentration camps</a> at the end of the second world war. </p>
<p>A New York Times journalist said at the time: “Writers have tried to describe these things, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/specials/magazine/forties.html">but words cannot describe them</a>.” Photographs offered proof that was “<a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76383468.pdf">more difficult to deny than with words</a>”, according to professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3637820.html">Barbie Zelizer</a>. </p>
<p>An Israeli government spokesperson said that photographs of the recent October 7 massacre had been released to combat a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/israel-shows-footage-of-hamas-killings-to-counter-denial-of-atrocities">Holocaust denial-like phenomenon</a>” over the Hamas atrocities.</p>
<h2>2. “Napalm Girl” (1972)</h2>
<p>Nick Ut’s photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing after a napalm attack on the village of Trang Bang has been considered “a symbol of the horror of war in general, and of the war <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Moments/f65MywAACAAJ?hl=en">in Vietnam in particular”</a>. The image created <a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-napalm-girl-myths-distort-the-reality-behind-a-horrific-photo-of-the-vietnam-war-and-exaggerate-its-impact-183291">the myth that the US was responsible</a> when in reality the napalm had been accidentally dropped by South Vietnamese forces.</p>
<p>Although Ut’s photograph did not radically transform US public opinion <a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-napalm-girl-myths-distort-the-reality-behind-a-horrific-photo-of-the-vietnam-war-and-exaggerate-its-impact-183291">to the extent often assumed</a>, it became an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/opinion/photojournalism-children-nick-ut.html">icon for anti-war sentiment </a> and Ut claimed that it influenced soldiers’ decisions <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/how-nick-ut-s-photo-napalm-girl-changed-the-vietnam-war-908256835749">to abandon the war.</a></p>
<h2>3. Abu Ghraib (2004)</h2>
<p>Photographs have played a powerful role in exposing war crimes, as in the case of the now infamous images documenting torture against detainees at the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/usa-pattern-brutality-and-cruelty-war-crimes-abu-ghraib">US military prison in Abu Ghraib, Iraq</a>. </p>
<p>Although written reports of abuses had been circulating for over a year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed only the images provided a “vivid realisation” of what happened. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/05/12/mr-rumsfelds-responsibility/bde749f3-e0c9-4f0e-80fe-fe02410d3ee9/">“Words don’t do it,” </a>, he added.</p>
<p>The most striking photograph, showing the hooded figure of Ali Shallal al-Qaysi with electrical cables attached to his outstretched arms, arguably became <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-wretched-new-picture-of-america/2013/11/22/87083a1a-53ac-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html">the defining image of the “war on terror”</a>. The image significantly damaged public perception of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884907084337">US foreign policy</a> and was appropriated as a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Pod-silhouette-ads-converted-into-iRaq-protest-posters-by-the-graphic-design-group_fig5_249689866">symbol of protest around the world</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-napalm-girl-myths-distort-the-reality-behind-a-horrific-photo-of-the-vietnam-war-and-exaggerate-its-impact-183291">50 years after ‘Napalm Girl,’ myths distort the reality behind a horrific photo of the Vietnam War and exaggerate its impact</a>
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<p>These images demonstrate the power of photography not only to provide “evidence” of the realities of war, but also to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. Author <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/54582/regarding-the-pain-of-others-by-susan-sontag/9780141012377">Susan Sontag famously warned</a> that over-exposure to images of suffering could cause apathy and “compassion fatigue” but, as the photography curator and academic David Campany has shown, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003104001-8/myth-compassion-fatigue-david-campbell">it’s not that clear-cut</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/107769901108800304">Research from 2011</a> concluded that photographs published in European news publications relating to human experiences of the 2009 Gaza conflict provoked stronger emotional reactions than articles.</p>
<p>In her work on the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis, Israeli author and art curator Ariella Azoulay argues that contemplating images of suffering binds us in a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1qgnqg7">“civil contract”</a> with those depicted: it is up to us to respond through meaningful action.</p>
<p>As we navigate the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/pageoneplus/israel-gaza-war-photos.html">harrowing news coverage of the Middle East conflict</a>, perhaps what is most important is photography’s potential to remind us of our shared humanity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pippa Oldfield's research has previously been supported by funding from AHRC; The British Academy; Paul Mellon Centre; and Peter Palmquist Memorial Fund, among others.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy O'Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Wartime photographs can be used for propaganda purposes.
Lucy O'Sullivan, Assistant Professor in Modern Languages (Spanish), University of Birmingham
Pippa Oldfield, Senior Lecturer in Photography, Teesside University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181407
2022-08-05T12:14:23Z
2022-08-05T12:14:23Z
Social media provides flood of images of death and carnage from Ukraine war – and contributes to weaker journalism standards
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467537/original/file-20220607-40890-hy7er.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C17%2C5974%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A soldier's body lies next to a destroyed Russian truck on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 25, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUkraineWar100DaysExplainer/1a73a1612aba4c479dfb2a16af7f21cd/photo">AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Photos of civilians killed or injured in the Russia-Ukraine war are widespread, particularly online, both on social media and in professional news media. </p>
<p>Editors have always published images of dead or suffering people during times of crisis, like wars and natural disasters. But the current crisis has delivered many more of these images, more widely published online, than ever before.</p>
<p>“It’s all over social media,” says Nancy San Martin, a longtime former foreign correspondent and editor at the Miami Herald. And not just online. Mainstream journalists are also departing from their traditional tendency to avoid <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/us/politics/photos-uvalde.html">prominently featuring images of dead people</a> or particularly direct depictions of physical injuries.</p>
<p>But in times of conflict overseas, those standard practices tend to ease, San Martin, now deputy managing editor for the history and culture desk at National Geographic, told me in a phone interview: “War will always open that door. Part of our role is to document the consequences of war and all that it entails.”</p>
<p>Editorial oversight has traditionally been part of the equation – the practice of a group of journalists who ensure context, balancing the significance and importance of what an image depicts with its gruesomeness. They might, for instance, choose a different angle of an injured or dead person that shows less blood, or crop an image so a dead person’s face isn’t visible, or choose to withhold an image altogether while providing written information about what happened.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://beenasarwar.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/2001-jan.-22-documentary-and-democracy-goldsmiths-college.pdf">longtime journalist and editor</a> following media, journalism and human rights, I
know images can become <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/world/2013/04/28/iconic-war-photographs/2119175/">public icons symbolizing major events</a>.</p>
<p>The flood of images from the Ukraine war runs deep and wide. It contains many potentially iconic images but also shows more raw carnage than in past conflicts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of three dead bodies lying next to a split-rail fence." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469057/original/file-20220615-24-g6m8g8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexander Gardner’s photos, along with those of Mathew Brady, depicted casualties of the U.S. Civil War and were among the first to show people who had been killed in combat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ds.05174/">Alexander Gardner via Library of Congress</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Powerful images</h2>
<p>From the <a href="https://www.life.com/history/crimea-where-war-photography-was-born/">earliest days of photography</a> in the 19th century, war has been a common subject, including <a href="https://www.nps.gov/anti/learn/historyculture/photography.htm">during the U.S. Civil War</a>. </p>
<p>Certain images have become famous, such as <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/article/joe-rosenthal-and-flag-raising-iwo-jima">Joe Rosenthal’s World War II image of U.S. Marines</a> raising the flag on Mount Suribachi, signaling the capture of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Imperial Army in February 1945. It was distributed by The Associated Press and <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/article/joe-rosenthal-and-flag-raising-iwo-jima">ran on the front pages</a> of many U.S. newspapers.</p>
<p>“There have always been powerful images emerging from conflict,” Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer <a href="https://patrickfarrellphotography.com/">Patrick Farrell</a> told me in a video call. “A still image is still one of the most powerful forms of media. It will sit with you forever.”</p>
<p>Many of the famous images are not of victory or glory but rather of violence and death – and also remain etched in public memory. Nick Ut’s photograph of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-napalm-girl-myths-distort-the-reality-behind-a-horrific-photo-of-the-vietnam-war-and-exaggerate-its-impact-183291">napalm girl</a>” Kim Phuc and John Filo’s photo of <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/in-depth/news/history/2020/05/01/kent-state-shooting-photos-mary-ann-vecchio-impacts-nation-jeffrey-miller-john-filo/3055009001/">Mary Ann Vecchio mourning student protester Jeffrey Miller</a> at Kent State University show both the foreign and domestic toll of the Vietnam War. They were <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/in-depth/news/history/2020/05/01/kent-state-shooting-photos-mary-ann-vecchio-impacts-nation-jeffrey-miller-john-filo/3055009001">transmitted via wire services</a>, too, and <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/04/vietnam-war-napalm-girl-photo-today">chosen to feature prominently</a> in newspapers and magazines across the country.</p>
<p>Photos of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/14/haiti-port-au-prince-deaths">bodies piled in the streets</a> after the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and floating in the water in <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2010/08/24/129400381/telling-their-stories">New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina</a> in the same year are examples of the choices made by editors across the nation to feature coverage showing the real human cost of significant natural disasters.</p>
<p>Kevin Carter’s 1993 image of a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2006/03/02/5241442/a-pulitzer-winning-photographers-suicide">vulture next to a starving child</a> in Sudan is another lasting image of human tragedy that was published by editors worldwide. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.</p>
<p>Wire-distributed photos of other tragedies, including Nilufer Demir’s image of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy whose body washed up on a Greek beach, and atrocities, like the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/abuse-photos-ii/8/">images from Abu Ghraib</a> of U.S. military personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners, are also visceral reminders of complex events. </p>
<h2>Increased volume</h2>
<p>The difference between those situations and the present one in Ukraine is the sheer volume of images.</p>
<p>There are, as usual in conflict situations, award-winning professional photojournalists in Ukraine <a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/ukraine-war-photographers-cnnphotos/">sending images back</a> to the media outlets they work for. But many of them are also posting images on their own or their employers’ <a href="https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4857/war-photography-in-the-age-of-social-media">social media accounts</a> – more images than might be published on a newspaper’s front page or homepage on the web.</p>
<p>Also on social media are <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-how-social-media-images-from-the-ground-could-be-affecting-our-response-to-the-war-178722">legions of ordinary citizens</a> taking pictures with their smartphones and bearing witness, sharing countless images every day.</p>
<p>With the “floodgates opened by social media,” as Farrell put it, the media environment in 2022 is different from previous decades. There are now many powerful images competing to become iconic.</p>
<p>It’s “not more graphic than what we saw during Vietnam,” in Farrell’s estimation, but the media cycle then, based on daily newspapers and nightly TV news broadcasts, meant there were breaks in the barrage of imagery. </p>
<p>What’s of concern to Farrell, and to me, is that there is less editorial oversight about which images reach the most eyeballs – even in professional newsrooms. </p>
<p>With social media in the mix and the never-ending competition to be first, editors are publishing and distributing images with less consideration for traditional editorial restraint and balance between gore and meaning – and with less context about the images themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man plays a piano in the street" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467539/original/file-20220607-24949-939qjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alexander, who did not want to provide his last name, plays a piano placed outside in the Old Town on March 29, 2022, in Lviv, Ukraine. Alexander said he was playing because he missed being able to play the piano after having to leave his behind when he fled his hometown of Kramatorsk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alexander-plays-a-piano-placed-outside-in-the-old-town-on-news-photo/1388364859">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Context is vital</h2>
<p>An important element of that context is that in some ways <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/27/what-know-about-ukraines-lviv-struck-by-missiles-when-biden-was-250-miles-away/">life goes on</a>, says San Martin. Despite the carnage and mayhem of war, she says, the places experiencing war are still places where people make their lives. Her husband, Joe Raedle, an award-winning photographer with Getty Images, has been on the ground in Ukraine documenting both the refugee exodus and everyday life – cultural performances, restaurants serving free meals, churches providing comfort – and a <a href="https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/alexander-plays-a-piano-placed-outside-in-the-old-town-on-news-photo/1388364859">man playing a piano on the street</a>, having left his own behind when he fled the fighting.</p>
<p>“It’s a different kind of war. Still heartbreaking,” she says, noting that there is more happening than the dominant images show. Those elements, she predicts, will become more important to full coverage of events in Ukraine as the war continues. It is going to be, as she says, “a long haul.”</p>
<p>It’s normal for media to focus on the immediacy of conflict or disaster and to highlight the most dramatic, even horrific events. But what San Martin reminds me, and what I have seen in my work, is that the journalists often give <a href="https://beenasarwar.com/2009/06/28/dr-sarwar-blog-media-matters-chapter-in-new-book-on-pakistan-india-divide/">less emphasis to the processes behind</a> events and the surrounding context – including the <a href="https://tvr2c.com/2016/10/26/beenasarwar/">survival, determination and resilience</a> of those affected.</p>
<p>Sensational images circulating on social media are similarly incomplete – or even potentially <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-ukraine-russia/fact-check-photo-of-children-saluting-ukrainian-tanks-dates-back-to-2016-idUSL1N2V10DO">false</a>, whether shared by propagandists or their innocent dupes. They represent an important, and alarming, reality. But there’s more to the picture than that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beena Sarwar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Many images from the Ukraine war are compelling and distressing depictions of the human costs of war.
Beena Sarwar, Visiting Professor of Journalism, Emerson College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183291
2022-06-02T19:06:50Z
2022-06-02T19:06:50Z
50 years after ‘Napalm Girl,’ myths distort the reality behind a horrific photo of the Vietnam War and exaggerate its impact
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466616/original/file-20220601-49160-94jy38.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2995%2C2164&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, near Trang Bang, Vietnam, after a South Vietnamese plane on June 8, 1972, accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on its own troops and civilians.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GermanyKimPhucPeacePrize/363b61fefe084ae0aa1109b82ddb9df5/photo?Query=Phan%20Thi%20Kim%20Phuc&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=102&currentItemNo=9">AP Photo/Nick Ut, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The “Napalm Girl” photograph of terror-stricken Vietnamese children fleeing an errant aerial attack on their village, taken 50 years ago this month, has rightly been called “<a href="https://www.independent.com/2013/08/08/witness-power-picture-received-emmy-nom/">a picture that doesn’t rest</a>.” </p>
<p>It is one of those exceptional visual artifacts that draws attention and even controversy years after it was made. </p>
<p>In May 2022, for example, Nick Ut, the photographer who captured the image, and the photo’s central figure, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/retired-ap-photographer-ut-pope-napalm-girl-photo-84644513">made news at the Vatican</a> as they presented a poster-size reproduction of the prize-winning image to Pope Francis, who has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/20/pope-ukraine-russia-00018704">emphasized the evils of warfare</a>. </p>
<p>In 2016, Facebook stirred <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-under-fire-censoring-iconic-napalm-girl-photo-n645526">controversy</a> by deleting “Napalm Girl” from a commentary posted at the network because the photograph shows the then-9-year-old Kim Phuc entirely naked. She had torn away her burning clothes as she and other terrified children ran from their village, Trang Bang, on June 8, 1972. Facebook retracted the decision amid an international uproar about the social network’s <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2016/09/facebook-censors-napalm-girl-photo-changes-mind-has-no-idea-what-its-doing.html">free speech policies</a>.</p>
<p>Such episodes signal how “Napalm Girl” is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians. The <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/1973">Pulitzer Prize-winning image</a>, formally known as “The Terror of War,” has also given rise to tenacious <a href="https://mediamythalert.com/2009/11/02/media-myths-faqs/">media-driven myths</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a young girl stands next to a man who has a camera slung from his neck. Both are smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1085&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1085&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466623/original/file-20220601-49132-5movf7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1085&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Phan Thi Kim Phuc, left, is visited by AP photographer Nick Ut in 1973. After taking the photograph of her fleeing in agony in 1972, Ut transported her to a hospital.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/KIM%20PHUC%20AP%20PHOTOGRAPHER%20UT/daacb8b6eee6da11af9f0014c2589dfb?Query=Phan%20Thi%20Kim%20Phuc&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=102&currentItemNo=15">AP photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Widely believed – often exaggerated</h2>
<p>What are media myths?</p>
<p>These are well-known stories about or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.</p>
<p>The distorting effects of four media myths have become attached to the photograph, which Ut made when he was a 21-year-old photographer for The Associated Press. </p>
<p>Prominent among the myths of the “Napalm Girl,” which I address and dismantle in my book “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520291294">Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism</a>,” is that U.S.-piloted or guided warplanes dropped the napalm, a gelatinous, incendiary substance, at Trang Bang. </p>
<p>Not so. </p>
<p>The napalm attack was carried out by propeller-driven Skyraider aircraft of the South Vietnamese Air Force trying to roust communist forces dug in near the village – as news accounts at the time made clear.</p>
<p>The headline over The New York Times’ <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/09/archives/south-vietnamese-drop-napalm-on-own-troops.html">report</a> from Trang Bang said: “South Vietnamese Drop Napalm on Own Troops.” <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2118/chicagotribune0609720000.pdf?1654103223">The Chicago Tribune front page of June 9, 1972, </a> stated the “napalm [was] dropped by a Vietnamese air force Skyraider diving onto the wrong target.” Christopher Wain, a veteran British journalist, wrote <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2119/IndianapolisStar_front.pdf?1654105513">in a dispatch for United Press International</a>: “These were South Vietnamese planes dropping napalm on South Vietnamese peasants and troops.” </p>
<p>The myth of <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna52992082">American culpability</a> at Trang Bang began taking hold during the 1972 presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate George McGovern referred to the photograph in a televised speech. The napalm that badly burned Kim Phuc, he declared, had been “dropped in the name of America.” </p>
<p>McGovern’s metaphoric claim anticipated similar assertions, including Susan Sontag’s statement in her 1973 book “On Photography,” that Kim Phuc had been “sprayed by American napalm.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A headline on a New York Times story from June 9, 1972, said 'South Vietnamese Drop Napalm on Own Troops'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=219&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466625/original/file-20220601-49050-37lmoh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The New York Times headline of June 9, 1972, clearly reported it was a South Vietnamese attack that sprayed napalm on troops and civilians.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1972/06/09/79469704.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0">New York Times archive</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hastened the war’s end?</h2>
<p>Two other related media myths rest on assumptions that “Napalm Girl” was so powerful that it must have <a href="https://mediamythalert.com/2017/03/14/napalm-girl-photograph-changed-us-and-our-stomach-for-war-but-how/">exerted powerful effects</a> on its audiences. These myths claim that the photograph <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/28/goya-etchings-louvre-disasters-of-war-exhibition">hastened an end to the war</a> and that it <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/03/09/ukraine-war-photos/">turned U.S. public opinion</a> against the conflict. </p>
<p>Neither is accurate.</p>
<p>Although most U.S. combat forces were out of Vietnam by the time Ut took the photograph, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/29/these-are-americas-9-longest-foreign-wars/">war went on for nearly three more years</a>. <a href="https://www.ap.org/explore/fall-of-saigon/">The end came in April 1975</a>, when communist forces overran South Vietnam and seized its capital.</p>
<p>Americans’ views about the war had <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/2299/Americans-Look-Back-Vietnam-War.aspx">turned negative</a> long before June 1972, as measured by a survey question the Gallup Organization posed periodically. The question – essentially a proxy for Americans’ views about Vietnam – was whether sending U.S. troops there had been a mistake. When the question was <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/2299/Americans-Look-Back-Vietnam-War.aspx">first asked in summer 1965, only 24%</a> of respondents said yes, sending in troops had been a mistake. </p>
<p><a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/2299/Americans-Look-Back-Vietnam-War.aspx">But by mid-May 1971</a> – more than a year before “Napalm Girl” was made – 61% of respondents said yes, sending troops had been mistaken policy. </p>
<p>In short, public opinion turned against the war long before “Napalm Girl” entered popular consciousness.</p>
<h2>Ubiquitous? Not exactly</h2>
<p>Another myth is that “Napalm Girl” appeared on newspaper front pages <a href="https://petapixel.com/2012/09/19/interview-with-nick-ut-the-photojournalist-who-shot-the-iconic-photo-napalm-girl/">everywhere</a> in America. </p>
<p>Many large U.S. daily newspapers did publish the photograph. But many newspapers abstained, perhaps because it depicted frontal nudity.</p>
<p>In a review I conducted with a research assistant of 40 leading daily U.S. newspapers – all of which were Associated Press subscribers – 21 titles placed “Napalm Girl” on the front page. </p>
<p>But 14 newspapers – more than one-third of the sample – did not publish “Napalm Girl” at all in the days immediately after its distribution. These included papers in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston and Newark.</p>
<p>Only three of the 40 newspapers examined – The Boston Globe, the New York Post and The New York Times – published editorials specifically addressing the photograph. The editorial in the New York Post, then a liberal-minded newspaper, was prophetic in saying: </p>
<p>“The picture of the children will never leave anyone who saw it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183291/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>W. Joseph Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians. It also shows how false assertions can get traction in the media.
W. Joseph Campbell, Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132772
2020-03-10T13:35:38Z
2020-03-10T13:35:38Z
John Liebenberg: masterful photographer of life and war in southern Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318440/original/file-20200303-66056-1vv9mae.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Liebenberg in the ransacked hospital in Cubal, Angola, in 1993.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photographer unknown/Courtesy the Liebenberg family</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African photojournalist <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-02-20-john-arthur-liebenberg-1958-2020-a-man-who-photographed-war-and-suffering/">John Liebenberg</a> is best known for his remarkable body of work in Namibia, especially the period of the late 1980s when the country headed towards its United Nations-supervised transition to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/namibian-struggle-independence-1966-1990-historical-background">independence</a>. </p>
<p>Born in 1958 in Johannesburg, his childhood was not an easy one, part of it spent in an orphanage. He finished school at a time when white South African men were expected to complete <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/youth/the_militarisation_of_the_south_african_state.htm">compulsory military service</a> and he was conscripted to Ondangwa in northern Namibia in 1976. It was illegal to take photographs in the army, but Liebenberg hid a small camera in the toilet block. </p>
<p>After national service Liebenberg returned to Namibia and worked in the Windhoek post office. He wanted to be a photographer. He also had a capacity to connect to people. He often spoke of the black migrant workers he came to know at the workplace, most of them from Namibia’s northern border area with Angola where the <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/12/annals-of-wars-we-dont-know-about-the-south-african-border-war-of-1966-1989/">war was intensifying</a>. Known as the ‘border war’ to South Africans and as the ‘war of liberation’ to Namibians, it drew Namibia, Angola and other countries into South Africa’s fight against armed liberation movements supported by socialist countries that <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/CWIHP_SouthAfrica_Final_Web.pdf">echoed wider Cold War politics</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318431/original/file-20200303-66112-12chn84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Families of South African military conscripts picnic on the Cunene River near the border with Angola in 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Liebenberg family</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Endearment” was a term Liebenberg liked to use when talking about his relationship with people, getting to know their stories, and their harsh journeys of necessity to work in the south. One had the sense, many years later, that the stories still obsessed him. It was the same once he joined <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/">The Namibian</a> newspaper and began covering the growing urban mobilisation of trade unions and students and, increasingly, the war zone on the border with Angola. </p>
<p>Fellow journalists and friends describe a man with the capacity to jump fences, break down boundaries and disarm people as he moved around like a whirlwind taking photographs, sometimes slyly, but often being touched by people and touching them in turn.</p>
<h2>Enemy of the state</h2>
<p>Namibia’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40175168?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">transition to independence</a> started on 1 April 1989 and initially foundered with the collapse of a ceasefire in the north. </p>
<p>Hours before the conflict resumed, Liebenberg’s car was riddled with bullets in an <a href="http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.php?objectid=32-130-731">assassination attempt</a>. He learned years later from the amnesty hearings of South Africa’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> how his would-be killers, the shadowy apartheid death squad the <a href="http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/reports/volume2/chapter2/subsection37.htm">Civil Cooperation Bureau</a>, had been commissioned to get rid of him. </p>
<p>It’s remarkable how he sustained the intensity of dense photographic coverage of ongoing protest and war in this period, including breaking the difficult story of the accounts of human rights abuses from detainees who belonged to the South West Africa People’s Organisation or <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-west-africa-peoples-organisation-swapo">SWAPO</a>. Their stories came to light after their release from the dungeons in southern Angola in 1989.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318432/original/file-20200303-66084-3gsjl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dark days in Soyo. MPLA forces patrol oil installations in Soyo, Cabinda, after their recapture from UNITA in 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Liebenberg family</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Namibian independence, Liebenberg moved on to cover the civil war <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">in Angola</a>, which he called the “war of madness”. The stakes were very high, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/05/angola-brutal-history-mpla-leftwing-discipline-betrayal">politics muddied</a>, and human life frequently disrespected. </p>
<p>He photographed the conflict in Luanda after the collapse of the agreement between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) following the elections in 1992. He accompanied the MPLA forces moving through central Angola to reconquer areas claimed by UNITA, including Huambo. Following his personal code of covering both sides of a struggle, he later photographed UNITA bases in southern Angola.</p>
<h2>Ghosts</h2>
<p>Liebenberg published his photographs of the Namibian war against South African colonial occupation in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bush-Ghosts-Life-Namibia-1986-90/dp/1415201005"><em>Bush of Ghosts</em></a> (2010). He invited me, as a historian of northern Namibia, to collaborate in the task. He was always very clear that the narrative must address all different parties in the struggle. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318677/original/file-20200304-66078-15xjy56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318677/original/file-20200304-66078-15xjy56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318677/original/file-20200304-66078-15xjy56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318677/original/file-20200304-66078-15xjy56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318677/original/file-20200304-66078-15xjy56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318677/original/file-20200304-66078-15xjy56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318677/original/file-20200304-66078-15xjy56.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Liebenberg’s book co-written with the author.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Umuzi</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The book has three chapters. The first follows young white conscripts who are pitched into the war zone of the Namibia-Angola border. It unfolds into scenes where white and black security forces confront local populations who face curfews and threats, who have their fields and homesteads destroyed by armoured vehicles and shellfire, but who often stand with unreadable stillness and dignity in the face of such impositions. This chapter acknowledges the vulnerability of young conscripts, but directly addresses them and the military apparatus of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> state. No other photographer in southern Africa has documented war in this way.</p>
<p>The second chapter in <em>Bush of Ghosts</em> is his homage to Namibians as they mobilised against South African rule. The third is more meditative, exploring the aftermath of war in portraits and landscapes. As Liebenberg’s co-author, I was astounded at the comprehensiveness of the subject matter and the lack of waste in this analogue archive.</p>
<h2>Chambers of the heart</h2>
<p>As we worked, Liebenberg pulled out another body of work he had never shown, the weekend studio portraits taken at the Ovambo Hostel for migrant men in Katutura township in Windhoek in 1986. These are astonishing for the way the men presented their sheer individuality to the camera. When some of these photos were exhibited in Windhoek in 2011, as <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/john-liebenberg-weekends-at-the-okombone">Weekends at the Okombone</a>, there were dramatic moments of recognition by some of the descendants of the photographed men.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318435/original/file-20200303-66052-1ys7l8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318435/original/file-20200303-66052-1ys7l8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318435/original/file-20200303-66052-1ys7l8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318435/original/file-20200303-66052-1ys7l8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318435/original/file-20200303-66052-1ys7l8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318435/original/file-20200303-66052-1ys7l8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318435/original/file-20200303-66052-1ys7l8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Child with spent flare, northern Namibia, 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Liebenberg family</span></span>
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<p>Liebenberg used to talk about the unpredictable way people could enter the “chambers of the heart”. This was not just about love. He was referring to the unexpected emotional consequences of his life work. </p>
<p>There are deep affective implications for a photographer coming close to people’s pain, death, mutilation, guilt, betrayal, mourning, rage or cruelty. Perhaps it made him determined and even reckless, throwing things to the wind and keeping the camera rolling as he famously did during the second plane crash he experienced in Huambo province in the 1990s.</p>
<p>And if you cannot reach or help the people who have come into the chambers of your heart, they can at least be brought into the chambers of your camera. That is, the subject enters John’s visual world, where unfathomable depths and surfaces cut many ways. That is why there is no single way to read any of his images, and probably why many remain so haunting.</p>
<p>And questions remain about the career and final predicament of a pre-eminent photographer who died in hospital after an operation at age 61 without healthcare benefits. Who often spoke of the exploitation of photographers by newspapers, agencies and networks. He said they were sometimes careless and often demanding about the copyright that would become the only means of survival for an ageing photographer and his family. A photographer whose surviving archive is unique, with the potential to open up the historical memory of nations. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318438/original/file-20200303-66064-1sn67cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318438/original/file-20200303-66064-1sn67cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318438/original/file-20200303-66064-1sn67cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318438/original/file-20200303-66064-1sn67cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318438/original/file-20200303-66064-1sn67cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318438/original/file-20200303-66064-1sn67cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318438/original/file-20200303-66064-1sn67cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Training parachute jump over Luiperdsvallei in Windhoek, 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Liebenberg family</span></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Hayes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
No other photographer in southern Africa has documented war in the way that John Liebenberg did. He captured the life and the conflict of both sides in his body of work.
Patricia Hayes, DSI/NRF SARChI Chair in Visual History & Theory, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.