Category: War

  • Atomic Tragedy — Photos

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    The Robert L. Capp collection at the Hoover Institution Archives contains ten never-before-published photographs illustrating the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb. Mr. Capp donated them to the Hoover Archives in 1998 with the provision that they not be reproduced until 2008. Three of these photographs are reproduced in Atomic Tragedy with the permission of the Capp family. Now that the restriction is no longer in force, the entire set is available below.

    Check it out here.

  • I was hooked on the story in Afghanistan

    by John D McHugh

    I am back in Afghanistan for the fifth time in two years. I have a lot in common with the British, Canadian and American soldiers deployed in the country. Like many of them, I have been here before and I have been under fire. And, dubious though the honour is, I am a member of an even more exclusive club: I have been shot during a gunfight.

    There are differences between us, too. I am a photojournalist, not a soldier. I carry cameras and a notebook, not a gun. In the heat of battle, I am trying to stay alive, not trying to kill. The biggest difference – the one that surprises all the soldiers I meet – is that more than volunteering to be here, I overcome many obstacles to be an observer in this war zone.

    Check it out here.

  • Dana Milbank – What the Family Would Let You See, the Pentagon Obstructs – washingtonpost.com

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    Lt. Col. Billy Hall, one of the most senior officers to be killed in the Iraq war, was laid to rest yesterday at Arlington National Cemetery. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Pentagon doesn’t want you to know that.

    The family of 38-year-old Hall, who leaves behind two young daughters and two stepsons, gave their permission for the media to cover his Arlington burial — a decision many grieving families make so that the nation will learn about their loved ones’ sacrifice. But the military had other ideas, and they arranged the Marine’s burial yesterday so that no sound, and few images, would make it into the public domain.

    Check it out here.

  • Lawyer: Military Only Produced 2 Witnesses Against AP Photog

    The U.S. military produced only two witnesses to testify at Bilal Hussein’s investigative hearing, according to Hussein’s lawyer.

    In the first details to be revealed about the court proceedings, attorney Paul Gardephe says two Marines who arrested Hussein in 2006 testified against him by videoconference. The military also presented evidence including 64 CDs that contained Hussein’s archive of photos and printouts of some of his images. Additionally, the military submitted the result of a positive explosive residue swab test, which Gardephe says may have tested positive because an explosion went off near Hussein’s apartment the day he was arrested.

    “There were no surprises,” Gardephe says. “There was never any evidence that suggested to me that he was performing in any other role than a photographer covering a conflict.”

    Check it out here.

  • UnionLeader.com – New Hampshire news – Michael Fumento: A fitting honor for a heroic, fallen SEAL – Friday, Apr. 11, 2008

    IT WAS THE spring of 2006 and I was embedded as a photojournalist in the meanest part of the meanest city in Iraq — Ramadi. Here the bad guys ruled. Leaving your base camp virtually guaranteed a fight. I got one the first day. When shots rang out, I jumped into the street and started snapping away. I looked back and saw a tall Navy SEAL seemingly pointing his MK48 medium machine gun right at me.

    In fact, he was protecting me and his teammates. Strange that I would never have learned his name if six months later he hadn’t sacrificed all to save those other men. Tuesday I looked on as Navy Master-at Arms 2nd Class Michael Monsoor received the nation’s highest award — the Medal of Honor.

    Check it out here.

  • Four Photojournalists Killed During Vietnam War Come Home For Burial

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    Remains from the crash site where four photojournalists were killed when their helicopter went down in Laos during the Vietnam war will be buried on Thursday April 3, 2008, during a ceremony at the Newseum in Washington.

    On February 10, 1971, photographers Henri Huet, 43, of the Associated Press, Larry Burrows, 44, of Life magazine, Kent Potter, 23, of United Press International, and Keisaburo Shimamoto, 34, of Newsweek were killed their South Vietnamese helicopter lost its way over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and was shot down by a North Vietnamese 37-mm anti-aircraft gun. Three of Saigon’s soldiers and the four-man flight crew also perished in the midair explosion.

    Check it out here.

  • A great digital imaging project honors the fallen

    Photographer Peter Krogh (author of the excellent The DAM Book, the Rapid Fixer extension for Bridge, and more) recently completed an ambitious & enormous digital imaging project: photographing all 58,256 names listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, enabling the creation of an interactive online version of the wall.  By stitching together some 1,494 digital images into a 400,000 pixel by 12,500 pixel monster, Peter & colleague Darren Higgins were able to help create a Flash-based presentation that enables you to search for names, read servicemen’s details, and add notes and photos to the wall.

    Check it out here.

  • In Shiite Slums, Victory Must Be Won in the Alleys – New York Times

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    Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye

    That dream, a nightmare, really, flashed through my mind as I stood at the end of a filthy, pothole-riddled alley talking with a small-time deputy commander in the Mahdi Army, the militia that is the armed wing of Mr. Sadr’s political movement. Standing there with his arms folded over his potbelly as his fighters scurried about behind him, the man who called himself Riadh, 34 years old, was effectively deputy commander of an alley.

    “We can’t face the armored tanks of the Americans face to face, because all we have is light guns,” he said. “So we just wait for a chance to attack something.”

    Check it out here.

  • 19 Tense Hours in Sadr City Alongside the Mahdi Army – washingtonpost.com

    In between battles, fighters spoke about politics and war. There was no sign of dread, or grief, or fear. Death was a matter of honor, a shortcut to some divine place.

    As the two sides exchanged fire, Thahabi’s mother, Um Falah, clutched a Koran and began to recite a prayer to Imam Ali, Shiite Islam’s most revered saint. Her eldest son, Abu Hassan, a Mahdi Army commander, was fighting this day.

    “May Ali be with you,” said Um Falah, who wore a black abaya and round eyeglasses. “I pray that all the bullets will not affect you.”

    Check it out here.

  • Another Episode of Humvee TV

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    I started shooting this series my first trip to Iraq and always enjoy the diversion of shooting while stuffed into the back of a Humvee. It helps keep the mind off things that tend to happen while riding in the back of a Humvee. And usually, as a journalist, you end up sitting in the seat that is on top of the gas tank. Not the best place to be if something bad is to happen.

    Check it out here.

  • In Fallujah, Peace Through Brute Strength – washingtonpost.com

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    Photos by Andrea Bruce – The Washington Post

    The city’s police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, a husky man with a leathered face and a firm voice that resonates with authority, ordered an aide to shut his office door. He turned to his computer. Across the screen flashed a video, purportedly made by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

    In the video, branches are thrown into a pit the size of a coffin, then doused with kerosene and ignited. The camera pans to three blindfolded men, kneeling, mouths sealed with tape. Six armed men in black masks stand behind them. One declares: “These three men fought and killed al-Qaeda. We will punish them according to Islam.” The masked men then kick the three into the burning grave.

    Zobaie angrily turned off the video. “How can we show mercy to those people?” he asked. “Do you want me to show mercy to them if I capture them?”

    Check it out here.

  • Annals of War: The New Yorker

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    The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib.
    by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris

    Specialist Sabrina Harman took hundreds of pictures, she says, to “just show what was going on, what was allowed to be done.” Photograph by Nubar Alexanian.

    Check it out here.

  • A picture not taken, a memory forged – Los Angeles Times

    By Rick Loomis, LA Times

    How can you never forget someone you never knew?

    I did take Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin’s photo, but I take photographs of people every day and I can’t say I knew him.

    It’s the picture I didn’t take that has left Austin burned forever in my memory.

    Check it out here.

  • Standard Operating Procedure – Trailer

    standardoperatingprocedure_200803201750.jpgNew from director Errol Morris.

    Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed America’s image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few “bad apples”? We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there. The Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup

    Check it out here.

  • Missing ‘the Big Story,’ but Not the Story – New York Times Blog

    By MICHAEL KAMBER

    Photojournalist Joao Silva and I jumped in a car and searched the streets. We found U.S. soldiers towing a damaged Humvee. It had been struck by a roadside bomb. Days later we were nearly knocked off our feet by the Red Cross bombing, which killed scores. Bodies were scattered across an entire city block.

    Joao, myself and Dexter Filkins were set upon by a crowd and nearly killed as we covered the attacks that morning.

    Check it out here.

  • Hundreds of Iraqi Journalists Forced Into Exile

    Hundreds of Iraqi journalists have been forced into exile since the war started five years ago, Reporters without Borders announced in a report released Wednesday.

    Check it out here.

  • Philip Jones Griffiths 1936-2008 – Magnum Photos

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    It was Philip’s consummate skill as a picture maker, carefully able to draw the viewer closer and closer to his subjects through his emotionally-charged compositions that lent such power to his work. Philip was always concerned with individuals – their personal and intimate suffering more than any particular class or ideological struggle. And the strength of his vision, that inspired so many of us, led Henri Cartier-Bresson to write of Philip: “not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths.”

    Check it out here.

  • In a Photographers Memory, Images of the Dead – New York Times

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    By MAX BECHERER

    I am a photographer and have captured thousands of images of Iraq and the war there since that day. But when I stop reading about the war, I guess I get that faraway look I always saw, as I grew up, in the eyes of countless veterans and civilians who lived through war, including my mother. I don’t wonder what they see anymore. I see images. Not the images I took, as the shutter is closed the moment I capture a photograph. I see the images and feel the sensations I keep mentally when I am without the help of a lens. Sometimes they are still images and sometimes they are short movie clips of the people on all sides of the war who are no longer living.

    Check it out here.

  • W A R S – A series of four essays revolving around a common topic – Magnum Photos

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    WARS, the inaugural series will launch on the Magnum In Motion home page, March 19, five years after the war in Iraq began. It will be published on Slate as four episodes.

    The point of departure was a quote extracted from Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths from a 2006 interview conducted in London by Magnum In Motion.

    Check it out here.

  • Audio slideshow: One woman's war – BBC

    Canadian photojournalist Rita Leistner travelled to Baghdad in 2003 as a freelance reporter determined to get behind the front lines of the war in Iraq. Over the next 18 months she returned to the country several times capturing images of life with the troops – as well as behind the scenes in a psychiatric hospital.

    Check it out here.