Abdul-Ahad, Ghaith, Alford, Kael, Anderson, Thorne, Leistner, Rita. Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq.ABDUL-AHAD, Ghaith, ALFORD, Kael, ANDERSON, Thorne, LEISTNER, Rita. Unembedded; four independent photojournalists The is a list of notable photojournalists from throughout history:
Four independent photojournalists (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (born in Baghdad, Iraq, 1975) is an unembedded Iraqi journalist who began working after the U.S. invasion and has written for The Guardian and Washington Post and published photographs in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The , Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson, and Rita Leistner) provide a view of the war in Iraq that major news media have not shown us--a view that the Iraqi people themselves see daily. It is a view of suffering and pain, as one expects. These photos are riveting, including one by Kael Alford of a dead eight-year-old girl, killed in a US bombing raid, being washed for burial. Her body seems not to have a mark on it. But one soon turns away from such photos. Even more riveting, I found, were photos that I could never have imagined. For example, there is a photo by Kael Alford taken in Baghdad on April 12, 2003. It shows father and his sons posing for the camera, outside their home. The father sits, his three sons behind him. They are obviously well off. Each cradles a submachine gun submachine gun Lightweight automatic small-arms weapon chambered for relatively low-energy pistol cartridges and fired from the hip or shoulder. Submachine guns usually have box-type magazines that hold 10–50 cartridges, or occasionally drums holding more rounds. , watching for looters. Otherwise, it looks like a relaxed family photo. Rita Leistner has a series of four photos of a woman in psychiatric hospital psychiatric hospital n. A hospital for the care and treatment of patients affected with acute or chronic mental illness. Also called mental hospital. doing her dally exercises. As she does her exercises she tells the photographer: "I hate war, these many wars. But I do like life. Sometimes one finds strength, like a drowning person." There is also an incredibly beautiful portrait by Rita Leistner of the Iranian-Kurdish wife of a leader of the PKK PKK Player-Killer Killer (multiplayer gaming) PKK Partiya Karker Kurdistan (Kurdistan Worker's Party) PKK Kudistan Isci Partisi (formerly Kurdistan Workers Party, now KADEK) Kurdish separatist group. In fact, many of these photographs are simply exquisitely beautiful photographs. The combination of such superb photography with such strong subject matter has produced a book that is literally unforgettable. This is a photographer's photography book, a work of great beauty and pain. It is a book that is likely to be remembered as one of the truly important books about the Iraq War Iraq War: see under Persian Gulf Wars. Iraq War or Second Persian Gulf War Brief conflict in 2003 between Iraq and a combined force of troops largely from the U.S. and Great Britain; and a subsequent U.S. . But it is also a book about the impact of war on civilians, a book that has entered into that timeless zone of great photography where one is seeing, finally, a kind of Platonic vision of the essence of war. Prof. John Rosser, Boston College Boston College, main campus at Chestnut Hill, Mass.; coeducational; Jesuit; est. and opened 1863. Actually a university, the school's Chestnut Hill campus comprises colleges of arts and sciences and business administration, the graduate school, and schools of nursing , Chestnut Hill, MA |
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