Cassidy Fleck
Sociology Through Photography
Fall 2011
Final Reflection: Images of War
Image 1: Photograph left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Sturken p.184)
Image 2: A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania July 1863 by Alexander
Gardner (Goldberg p. 29)
Image 3: Survivors Behind Barbed Wire, Buchenwald, 1945 by Margaret BourkeWhite (Goldberg p. 36)
Of all the images to choose and topics to discuss I think I chose one of the
most morbid. I do not know if the reason these images stayed with me more than
any others we studied this semester is because of their latent violence or because
they represent some of the most horrific moments in modern history. The
sociological value of the prints themselves fascinates me; for along with the tragedy
the images convey, the physical prints document the evolution of photography. They
also demonstrate that since its inception, photography has followed conflict,
documenting the darkest side of humanity. Photography’s presence, whether it is to
offer comfort, solicit support or serve as proof, has become as much a part of war as
the conflict itself.
Image 1:
The first image is one that does not immediately communicate its relevance
to war photography. But then the question of where the photograph was taken and
how it came to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial makes it the most eerie of the series.
A Vietcong soldier in his military uniform stands with who I assume to be his
daughter, a girl of about eleven. She sports pigtails, the top of her head barely
reaching her father’s shoulder. Both father and daughter look into the camera,
serious, unsmiling. They seem to be drawn towards each other, each leaning
towards the other, wordlessly communicating the intimacy shared between parent
and child.
This photo was found along with a note at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A
memorial provides the means for the living to converse with the dead, a conduit to
the otherworld where survivors can interact with the deceased, confess, ask for
forgiveness, and elicit response. The memorial provides soldiers’ names, but names
cannot bring the dead alive in the same way as a photograph. A picture displays
their likeness; it captures the essence of who they were in life. However, the
Vietcong soldier is not listed amongst the fallen. Only American soldiers are
memorialized at the Veterans Memorial. But somehow, placing this man’s photo
amongst the names of the dead elevates him to a memorial status on par with his
killer’s comrades.
Richard Luttrell was only eighteen years old when he took this Vietcong
soldier’s life. In the note he left beside the photo, Luttrell writes that the Vietcong
soldier hesitated, choosing to look at Luttrell rather than shoot him. Was it because
Luttrell was merely a child himself? Did he see his daughter in Luttrell’s youth? After
shooting the soldier, Luttrell took this photograph from the man’s body. I want to
believe he did this in a desperate attempt to render the dead man alive once more.
But the compulsion to loot the photograph may simply have been further
emasculation of the defeated enemy.
The picture, once a talisman for the Vietnamese soldier now accompanied his
murderer through Vietnam and eventually back to the US where Luttrell carried it in
his wallet for twenty-two years. Perhaps, then, his compulsion to take the photo was
at least partly due guilt, the guilt of depriving a man of his family and a daughter of
her father. Did the daughter survive the war? Or is she, like her father, another
victim of violence? Was her father also a killer? The photograph, like the moment of
the Vietcong soldier’s death reveals the inability to distinguish duty from murder,
the wartime mantra of ‘kill or be killed’ and aggression. Luttrell’s note, crucial to
providing the context for this image, states that perhaps it was this man’s value for
life, a value he experienced as a father and Luttrell only later came to experience
when he too became a father, that saved Luttrell’s life.
Taking the photograph from his wallet and placing it at the memorial makes
the private public. It makes the personal part of a greater cultural memory. The
photograph, now part of the US government archives, published in coffee table
books sold to middle class Americans, discussed in a sociological study on images as
memorials, has been incorporated into the greater context of war. Although
poignant, its story, like the nameless father and daughter pictured, have yet again
been de-individualized. Only, in that brief yet fated moment when the soldier and
Luttrell faced each other on the trail, was this man fully revealed. His photograph
can only conjure a projection of who he was in life.
Image 2:
The second image is evidence of some of the first war photographs created.
Bodies of Civil War soldiers lie in a Gettysburg field. They have an almost uniform
posture with arched backs and sprawled legs, staring lifelessly into the clouds. After
two days of rain, the bloating masks their malnourishment. Little effort is made to
present the bodies more acceptably, to sanitize war. The photograph, titled A
Harvest of Death, suggests that the gods of war have come to reap their crop of souls.
Men kill men in fields, echoing faintly of the primacy of the conflict between Cain
and Abel, of sowing and then collecting aggression.
While the display of bodies is not sanitized, the vague context of the image
distances it from its audience. The depiction of bodies in a battlefield, perhaps since
it is so removed historically from the present, perhaps because the image itself
offers few details to anchor it in a particular time in history, makes me think of it in
a universal context. It is a picture of violence, of tragedy, but of few specifics. This
element of universality in addition to the provocative title creates a sense of high
drama in the scene.
The image contradicts itself. It takes liberties in order to communicate truth.
The bodies were moved so as to capture a sense of the vastness of the death
sprawling throughout the field. Tampering with the bodies may have been, in part,
to counteract the limitations of early photography. However, the captions were also
manipulated so as not to betray that the image was staged. But especially then,
before the age of editing software, photography was accepted as truth. How could
the picture lie? Yet the staged bodies leads me to ask, does the artificial composition
detract from the truth the image communicates? Grouping the bodies made them
forensically unviable. However, it did manage to convey the sentiment of immense
destruction, seemingly endless horror.
I found it interesting how many of the Civil War negatives ended up as glass
panes in greenhouses, the sun erasing the image and therefore the memory of war
while the plates themselves encouraged growth, a blood sacrifice for the promise of
new life. At the time, war photography was not a desired commodity. The image was
reproduced two years after it was taken. It was then redrawn with the belief that an
artistic rendering would better convey the conditions of war than photography.
The general public’s reaction to the images was one of dismissal, one where
forgetting the violence they have suffered takes priority over recording the
slaughter for the benefit of future generations. It was a ‘turn over a fresh leaf’
philosophy rather than a ‘we will never forget’ mentality. Perhaps as photographs
became more common and accessible means of communication, their historical and
sociological significance became more widely accepted. Regardless, the men with
cameras, Brady and Gardener, felt the documentary impulse to photograph war.
This impulse, preserved in the US government archives, presents proof of a nation
turned upon itself, leaving fields of bodies in the wake of its violence.
Image 3:
The third image is not as graphic as the second image. Yet its violence is just
as unsettling. There is horror in the casual way in which the prisoners grip the
barbed wire. About twenty men stand in two rows. They wear striped prisoner’s
uniforms and work boots. Some have hats and overcoats. They crowd the rows of
barbed wire that separate them from the photographers. Presumably, there are
multiple photographers because the men’s gazes point in several directions. Their
clothes are soiled and a few of the men are severely underweight. Most of the men
seem to be between the ages of twenty and forty. But age is difficult to determine
considering the prisoners’ physical duress.
There is one elderly man. His cane extends to the barbed wire; the tips of his
fingers hang from the barbed fence; his eyes plead with Bourke-White’s lens. I find
my attention wanders between this man and the young man in the center of the
image. In contrast, the younger man sports a trimmed beard and a healthier build
than some of his companions. He grips the barbed wire with a lingering strength. His
eyes communicate both anger and despair.
What was it like to be there, to see these men and take pictures of them like
neglected animals at a zoo? Did Bourke-White feel like she was exploiting their
pain? Did they want her to take the picture, to collect proof of the injustices they
were forced to endure? The smell of the camp alone must have been dizzying.
It is sick to write this, but the photograph is visually pleasing. Its composition
is balanced, its figures well-framed. The lighting illuminates their faces and
contrasts well with the darkness of their surroundings.
I believe that the artistic composition gives the men dignity. Bourke-White’s
attempt to frame them head to toe exposes the entirety of their condition, yet she
pulls focus on their faces, more specifically their eyes. Her composition returns
humanity to these men who have for too long experienced what it means to live
bereft of such recognition.
This image was created as proof, proof of the Holocaust, proof of exactly
what men are capable of doing to each other, proof of what men can endure.
Photographs of the Holocaust are evidence. Words are insufficient in
communicating this level of violence. Photographs allow us to visualize horror. They
force us to accept their existence.
Although there was a desire, a moral imperative to disseminate uncensored
images of the concentration camps, a need to burn them into public memory, this
image alone was not widely published until the 1950’s. Graphic images, if published,
were printed inside the covers of newspapers and magazines. Margaret BourkeWhite’s photograph depicts an image of suggestion. She communicates violence in
digestible amounts, just enough to show an audience that yes, it happened without
going into graphic detail. It is this palatable discussion of genocide, I believe, that
encouraged this image over others to become a symbol of the Holocaust.
I do not know to what extent I support this public censorship. While images
do not have to traumatize to communicate violence, they convey a sense of reality
that is difficult to question. Last Spring, I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. While I had
studied the Holocaust since I was in fourth grade, I was unprepared for what I
experienced in the camp. Sixty years since its liberation and the air still felt heavy
with ash. How can you capture such weight with a camera? To what extent should
you photograph victims of extreme violence? I suppose you focus on their eyes.
Violence hovers around the frames in these images. While not directly
present in Image 1, the father’s uniform suggests conflict and the photograph itself
carries the atrocities of war. Image 2 and Image 3 depict the aftermath of war, with
the hint of violence lingering in the air, in the distortion of the bloated corpses and
the prisoners’ hollow stares. These photographs have been incorporated into
history. They help tell the story of war as it happened. They confront their audience
with reality. Even though you can manipulate reality just as much as you can
manipulate an image, truth still exists within the frame. It is just as crucial to
document violence, the darker side of the human experience, as it is to document
birthdays, family vacations, christenings and weddings. These photographs defy the
denial of violence.