Abstract
It is rare to review books that are as powerful and challenging as this very “heavy” book. Literally heavy, as this is a large coffee table–sized book, with high-quality photo reproduction on thick paper. It is also intensely “heavy” in the sense of being very moving and profound—even more so, given that as I write, photojournalists were being killed and beheaded in the Middle East. And the fighting continues.
Photojournalists at War should be required reading for all photojournalism students or anyone wanting to be a war correspondent. Author Michael Kamber’s intent was to portray the craft of conflict photography and provide a unique oral history by photojournalists of America’s 9-year conflict in the Middle East from 2003 to war’s end in 2011.
Kamber has worked as a photojournalist for over 25 years and covered the war in Iraq for the New York Times between 2003 and 2012. A World Press Photo Award recipient, he has been nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize, twice for photography and once for reporting.
He did an excellent job collecting eye-witness accounts by photojournalists from prominent news organizations about how they covered the war and their views on the role of the media, issues of censorship, and many personal issues they faced. Kamber dedicated his book to the 150 Iraqi journalists killed covering the war and Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, photojournalists who were killed in Libya in 2011.
This book suggests that traditionally photojournalists have been silent witnesses to war, with a different approach in their craft. But Kamber brings the voices of his interviewees alive as they describe graphically how this war had no front lines and how the photographers themselves were targets and worked close to death on a daily basis. More photojournalists were killed in Iraq than in any other modern conflict.
Censorship became the starting point for this book, writes Kamber, due to his own experiences while embedded with troops in combat and with military rules that prevented photographing wounded or dead American soldiers. As he began interviewing other photojournalists, however, his goal became to create a record of what happened in this war.
The book contains Q&A interviews with 39 men and women photojournalists (organized in alphabetical order by name), and includes well-captioned photos by each. Each interview contains helpful, intense discussions of why he or she took the photo, whether it was used, and whether he or she believed the photos succeeded or failed in getting people to pay attention to the war. The book also includes a timeline of the war, maps, and appendices with an example of an embed agreement, and a list of Iraqi war casualties.
The interviews cover a range of personal and professional issues for these photojournalists including the impacts of this career on marriages and of being injured or wounded (e.g., Joåo Silva’s story of stepping on a mine and losing both legs), post-war experiences after returning home with posttraumatic stress disorder, the contrast with Viet Nam-era experiences of older photojournalists, whether there are any iconic images from this war (Abu Ghraib, for example), views on how the Iraqis and Westerners were similar or differed in how they photographed the war; what was it like being a photographer for the other side; what it was it like to be a military photographer; how the experiences in the war differed for women and men photojournalists; what a typical workday was like in the war zone; and, whether to help others when under fire or to photograph.
I recommend this book also for its excellent ethics discussions appropriate for journalism students. A few examples, beyond the ethical debates over manipulated images, include whether to photograph wounded or dead Americans or prisoners, staging scenes to photograph, whether or not to photograph scenes staged by the military or others, and, how much blood is too much for readers to see.
Reader alert! Many images included in this book are very graphic and heart-wrenching scenes from the war zone (e.g., a photo of the head of a suicide bomber) and similar images of injured or dead soldiers returned home. “I feel like (a war photographer’s) stock-in-trade is death and suffering,” writes Kamber. In Eugene Richard’s interview, he’s quoted as saying, “It’s kind of pornography of war.” It is very difficult to read about and see so much pain and suffering.
So why read this book? I thought photojournalist Ed Kashi summed it up best: “We still need educated, experienced journalists who can understand the historical significance of something.” This book will help in that educational process.