What is it good for (WIIGF)? And how does photography account for it, or tell the story of war?
Lots of assorted threads come to mind, and I’d like to start a string of posts that deal with war and its intersections with the image world I encounter. I’ve been mulling this over ever since PhotoNOLA last December, when I asked Bruce Davidson about shooting war, and he said that the Civil Rights Movement, Brooklyn gangs, and the NYC subway had been war-like enough for him, that he’d never felt compelled to go into combat zones despite other great photographers who had and had emerged with some profound photographs (Don McCullin, James Nachtwey, etc.). Apparently the Magnum war bug never bit him. That is, he’d never felt compelled to go into war in search of an image that would capture not just news, not just details, but an image that might summarize man’s plight, an image that might cause the end of wars.
Bruce Davidson lecture, Historic New Orleans Collection, December 2008
He was fairly emphatic about it. I was a bit surprised to hear that he hadn’t done any war photography, but his humanitarian, pacifist side seems to survive well in his photographs nonetheless. For a New Yorker, he’s surprisingly low-key. A survivor, of sorts.
Here’s a guiding, or framing, quote to kick off this series of posts:
