Bringing together the work of 10 extraordinary photographers, this master's class on war photography includes more than 150 b&w and color photos, annotated with descriptions of their subjects and with very personal reflections from practitioners like magazine contract photographers James Nachtwey (Time) and Ron Haviv (Newsweek) about the nature of their work. A former war photographer in Northern Ireland and El Salvador, Howe, in his illustrated introductory essay, offers first-hand knowledge of the addictive nature of violence and the voyeurism inherent in the business. And as former picture editor for the New York Times Magazine
and director of photography for Life, he is also able to lay bare the mechanism by which an image tells a story. The featured photographers then join the chorus one by one. Haviv says the work is "completely selfish," in that it takes him into the history of a country, but he also talks about the role of war photography in helping people. MacArthur Fellowship winner Susan Meiselas explains: "I don't have any doubt that what propels you into these powerful situations is the feeling that whatever you're bringing home is evidence of something of tremendous significance." Her photographs of the execution of Maryknolls nuns in San Salvador are now part of the civil case filed against two members of the government at the time. On the whole, the images—of murders, torture, ruins, hooded paramilitary militias, dead soldiers and civilians, burning vehicles, scarred victims, fleeing refugees—are brutal. At the same time, the stories these photographers tell, and the images they republish here, focus the world's attention on war's atrocities at a crucial moment. (Jan.)
