photographers

The modern image of war begins with war photography. The first known photograph had been taken in 1826 but it was thirteen years before Louis Daguerre began commercial photography in his Paris studio. The odd blurred photograph survives from the Mexican war of 1846, but the first war to be recorded on camera was the Crimean. The first cameras could record static objects and people posing, but no movement, and were extremely bulky, thus the first war photographs were either of camp life or of the dreadful legacy of battle—the spent cannon balls in the ‘Valley of Death’ after the Charge of the Light Brigade. Even so, these photographs illustrate the power of the photograph. The camera records more than the human eye and brain, which filter out what they do not want to see.

After war correspondent William Russell's reports of the conduct of the war began appearing in The Times, the British government sent Roger Fenton to make a more favourable photographic record. The camp scenes, with bearded soldiers, some wives, and cantinières, or the many-masted ships riding at anchor in the harbour at Balaclava, instantly transport us to the scene in a way that no painting ever can. The battle scenes had to be staged, however. The Indian Mutiny produced similar group pictures and recorded the aftermath of hard fighting.

By April 1861, when the American civil war began, photography had advanced with the introduction of glass plate negatives. Mathew Brady, a successful celebrity photographer, packed a mobile darkroom in a horse-drawn wagon and headed for the first battle of Bull Run. He compiled Incidents of War, a photographic history of the conflict. The results were dramatic. Brady's photographs of the devastation after the battle of Antietam did much to temper war fever. His shots of Confederate dead, their bodies swollen, their trouser buttons undone as the wounded had fumbled to see if they had received wounds to the gut, told of the disgusting reality of conflict. As the New York Times reported, ‘Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war.’ This was the beginning of photo-journalism. Brady's work was, and is, recognized not only as a superb historical record, but as a form of art. He was the civil-war combat photographer par excellence, but he was not alone. His assistant Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War includes the deeply moving photograph ‘Home of a rebel sharpshooter’, a young Confederate sniper lying dead between the rocks in July 1863, the shining barrel of his well-maintained rifle so real you can almost touch it.

In the 1870s technicians produced a dry plate with silver salts in a gelatine base which did not need to be sensitized in liquid but was ready to use and could be developed long afterwards. The new developments ensured even better coverage of the Second Boer War and the Russo-Japanese war. The British dead packed in their trenches on Spion Kop mirror the dead in Brady's photographs, but now that such photographs were easier to take, a reluctance to show them began to emerge. By the time of WW I box cameras were within the reach of every soldier. Paradoxically, because reporting and photography were so tightly controlled, and because photography—including air photography—was now part of intelligence gathering and surveillance and target acquisition, WW I did not give rise to any first-rate human-interest war photographers. Photographs of dead and mutilated soldiers were suppressed. But there were millions of photographs.

The Spanish civil war ushered in a new era in which the civilian population was enmeshed in the conflict. Robert Capa, born André Friedmann in Budapest, understood and recorded this change. After working in Berlin he moved to Paris in 1933 where he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, the artist, photographer, and film producer. In 1935 he adopted his famous name and began collaborating with Gerda Taro, who was killed in Spain in 1937. Capa's coverage of Spain appeared regularly in Vu, Regards, Ce Soir, Weekly Illustrated, Picture Post, and Life. His ‘Death of a Loyalist soldier’, taken in 1937, first appeared in Vu and was then picked up by the US Life and the UK Picture Post. Capa's photographs were the subject of hyperbole: Picture Post billed a set of photographs titled ‘This is war!’ as ‘the finest picture of front line action ever taken’, by ‘the greatest war photographer in the world’. Although the pictures might seem tame to a generation accustomed to horrific pictures of conflict, they did have a great impact at the time. Picture Post felt it necessary to point out the photographs were not propaganda but, in accordance with the new philosophy of war correspondents of the time, ‘simply a record of modern war from the inside’. The photographers also showed that the battlefield was now everywhere: Capa's picture of a mother and child watching as bombers circled overhead, or those of Barcelona being bombed taken by Chim/Szymin (David Seymour).

It was clearly impossible to impose WW I-style restrictions on photographers of this standard. Instead, Allied governments needed their support. After the fall of France in 1940 all pretence at objectivity was abandoned. Capa and his British colleague George Rodger became part of the Allied war effort, as did fine British photographers who joined the Army Film and Photographic Unit. WW II generals were aware of the power of photography and often dressed for the part, notably Clark, Montgomery, Patton, and above all MacArthur. Capa and several other top US photographers joined Clark's forces in Italy, and Capa went ashore with the Americans in Normandy, moving with them in their advance through Europe. The Red Army also had excellent photographers, notably Yevgeniy Khaldei, who took the famous re-enactment of raising the Red Flag over the Reichstag in the battle of Berlin. One of the Russian sergeants was wearing two looted watches on each wrist, which the censors duly painted out.

The end of WW II did not make the world a safer place—not for war photographers, at any rate. Capa was killed on 25 May 1954 in Thai Binh, Indochina, after stepping on a landmine. His colleague Chim was killed on 10 November 1956 by Egyptian machine-gun fire near the Suez Canal. Both had been founder members of the Magnum photographic agency. The Overseas Press Club's annual Robert Capa Award is given for ‘superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad’.

The greatest photographer of the post-war period is probably Don McCullin, who worked for The Sunday Times and for Magnum. McCullin photographed in Vietnam—notably the 1968 Tet offensive—Northern Ireland, and Cyprus. Larry Burrows also took outstanding photographs for Life including the emblematic Vietnam shots of a weeping US helicopter gunner and of a white soldier coming to the aid of a wounded black comrade. Gilles Peress photographed Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. James Nachtwey photographed Northern Ireland, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan, and Rwanda and has gained many awards including the Robert Capa Gold medal in 1983, 1984, 1986, and 1994. Luc Delahaye photographed Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, and Haiti for Magnum and won the Capa award in 1993. Corinne Dufka photographed Nicaragua, Bosnia, and post-modern chaos in many countries in Africa for Reuters. By the nature of their work, war photographers are exposed to danger. Due to restrictions on what can be shown on television, and the nature of the medium, still photographers remain able to capture the most graphic images of the horrors of combat, conflict, and its consequences, and continue to record the most vivid and concise images of war.

Bibliography

• Manchester, William, In Our Time: The World as seen by Magnum Photographers (New York, 1989)

— Christopher Bellamy