(For pictures and gallery information: http://www.photographicnyc.com/)
By Stanley Rogouski, 4/17/06
It is an almost unbearable image. The nude body of an
eight-year-old girl killed by American bombs during the ‘Shock and Awe’
campaign in 2003 is being washed for burial by a middle-aged woman dressed
entirely in black. There is no obvious blood or gore. On the contrary, it is
difficult to figure out just by looking at the photograph what killed her. Her
mouth, which is open, almost looks as though it could be drawing in breath and
you search her eyes, also open, for any sign of life, any sign that the
photograph had been mislabeled. But then you notice the wad of cloth placed
between her legs for modesty and remember that Muslims bury their dead as
quickly as possible. You take the book, hold it vertically and close to the
light and you can see that her lips are colorless and entirely drained of
blood. You notice the utterly lifeless quality of her eyes and you realize what
you, as an American are guilty of. Osama Bin Laden is alive and well somewhere
in the mountains of Pakistan, and this little girl has
paid the price for what he did on 9/11.
Kael Alford, the photographer, who has expressed some
ambivalence about seeing this photograph published at all, is part of a
stunning but often horrifying new book and traveling exhibit called ‘Unembedded’.
The exhibit, which is currently being displayed at the ‘Photographic Gallery’
at 252 Front Street in lower Manhattan, features Alford’s work as
well as photographs by Thorne Anderson, Rita Leistner, and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad.
All four are freelance photojournalists who work without the protection (or
censorship) of the US military, and all four were in Najef for the entire
course of the American siege, long after the official media had been whisked
out of the city ‘for their own safety’. Alford and Abdul-Ahad, an American from
Middletown, New York and an Iraqi who had deserted from Saddam’s army six years
earlier, were both in Baghdad for the American invasion, and Leistner traveled
through the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq and Turkey in the spring of 2003.
Indeed, Leistner’s portrait of the strikingly beautiful young wife of the
Kurdish separatist leader Osman Ocalan almost appears to belong in another
exhibit altogether, her confident gaze starring directly into the camera
commanding the scene to rise up around her almost as an act of will with little
or no effort from the photographer.
The rest of the exhibit is a parade of almost
unrelieved horror and chaos, of the dead, the dying, and the damned, an inferno
the official media has long since given up trying to cover at all and which the
US government would rather the
American people didn’t see. That the American government would just as soon
censor these images and that the extreme right in the United States would label them as ‘giving
aid and comfort to the enemy’ has not deterred Alford, Anderson, Abdul-Ahad, and Leistner. On
the contrary, they have stepped up and performed the job that the official
media and Congress are too cowardly or outright compromised to do. They have
run, with little or no thought for their own safety, right into the mouth of
hell and through sheer courage and artistic integrity given order to the chaos
of American occupied Iraq and brought back images few Americans, even soldiers
serving in Iraq, have seen, and which Iraqi civilians live with as part of
their mundane daily existence. They force us to confront the moral issues of
invading Iraq.
For Alford, Anderson, Leistner, and Abdul-Ahad,
the decision to go to Iraq in the first place was not a
difficult one to make. Like all real journalists, and unlike the kind of person
who would submit to writing government propaganda as part of the ’embedded’
media, they have a natural instinct to go to ‘where the action is’. Like a
fireman rushing into a burning building, this is simply an instinct, and,
indeed, one of the most powerful photographs of the exhibit, title ‘Baghdad,
12th, 2004
image better than I could express it in words.
Earlier in the day, Abdul-Ahad had received a phone
call that the insurgents had blown up a Bradley fighting vehicle and that a
crowd of Iraqis were celebrating around the burning wreckage. The scene has
taken on the appearance of a macabre carnival and that he should get to Haifa Street immediately. But the US military would turn the
tables against the Iraqis in a horrifying way and strafe Haifa Street with Apache attack
helicopters, killing 22 civilians and wounding over 40 more. In the photo, we
see an American helicopter in the upper right hand corner flying out of the
frame after pulverizing a building off in the distance, and a crowd of
terrified civilians running in our direction. But the photographer is not
running away from the horror. He’s running towards it, and horror it is. When
he arrives on the scene, the Bradley is on fire and people are sprawled out all
over Haifa Street dead or dying. Two bodies lie
in a clump in like chop meat and blood is pouring out of their heads. Then the
helicopters return and Abdul-Ahad is almost killed himself. He survives but he
is tortured by what he had seen, and, more importantly, how he had acted. Why
had he kept taking photos? Why had he remained an observer when he should have
gotten involved? ‘All the people I had shared my shelter with are dead,’ he
writes. ‘Every time I look at these pictures I tell myself that I have killed
these people. I should have helped instead of taking pictures.’
But he doesn’t. He can’t. He acts on instinct. ‘Six
of us were squeezed into a space less then seven feet wide. Blood started
dripping onto my camera and all I could think of was keeping my lens clean.’
He does more than keep his lens clean. All four of
the photographers in this exhibit not only keep their cool under fire and they not
only document the horror of Iraq under the American
occupation, they impose order on the blood, gore and the chaos. It becomes
almost beautiful to look at. Most of the photos are exposed perfectly. Most are
framed perfectly. They follow ‘the rule of thirds’ even in the most extreme
circumstances. Somehow Abdul-Ahad manages to take photos that are sharp enough
to blow up to 24 x 36 even in the middle of an attack by American helicopters.
Somehow Kael Alford, slight, blond, pretty and American manages to keep her
hands from shaking in the middle of the siege of Najef in a room full of
fundamentalist Shiite militiamen. Somehow she manages to take a good photo of a
gigantic portrait of Al Sadr guarded by menacing black clad figures armed with
AK-47s who look, if anything, a bit like the demons from the movie ‘Ghost’ who
drag evil souls down into hell. One photo by Abdul Ahad, of a teenage boy,
lying dead in the middle of Haifa Street framed against the palm trees
and the burning Bradley fighting vehicle is composed so perfectly you wonder if
it’s even morally acceptable to look at it. Bullet holes riddle his white
shirt, giving it the appearance of a funeral shroud. The photographers lens is
less than a few feet away from the boy’s head. A bit of flare pokes through the
palms trees in the background shining down on the rubble strewn cement, almost
giving you the impression that God is reaching down to elevate the his soul
into heaven. This is photojournalism that rises to the level of art, Francesco
Goya with a digital SLR.
In other words, you have to stop yourself from
admiring the technical perfection of these photographs and remind yourself
what’s going on in front of your eyes. It’s one thing to make a painting about
the horrors of war. It’s another one altogether to use live models. You can
understand why Kael Alford and Abdul Ahad feel guilty, like voyeurs and almost
see their own skill at taking photos as being somehow immoral.
They shouldn’t. The artistry of the photographs and the meticulous observation
of all four photographers have given the people of Baghdad and Najef a voice, even in
the midst of their destruction. There are almost no shots taken with a
telephoto lens. The photographers get up close with a 35mm or a 50mm lens and
become, in effect, part of the scene that they’re documenting. We see the pain
in their eyes and feel the rage in their gestures. What’s more, we not only see
a culture as its being destroyed, we see what that culture was like before the
American occupation and wonder if the Iraqi people have any chance of getting
it back. The people in the photographs aren’t monsters or victims. They’re
exactly like us. Slogans blare out from graffiti covered walls. ‘American
soldiers will pay blood for oil.’ ‘We love America and Iraq.’ Women play in the Tigris River out of the gaze of their men
and out of the gaze of the American army. Young Madhi Army members wear
baseball hats turned around and look more like New York City high school kids than they do
the evil terrorists of American propaganda. The mentally ill Rashad Psychiatric
Hospital plead that they don’t belong in the middle of all of the madness and
almost stand in for the Iraqi people as a whole pleading to be freed from the
madness of the war. One shot shows the façade of a computer store half blow
away revealing a line of new PCs and a poster advertising Microsoft in the Middle East. The brilliant lights of the
Ali Shrine illuminate the temporary campground of the Mahdi Army set up in the
middle of the third holiest place in Shia Islam. Who are these people who we
Americans have decided to torment as revenge for September 11th and
yet who still invite western journalists to come into their country and tell
their story?
‘We left the kids behind to die there alone,
Abdul-Ahad writes. ‘I didn’t even try to move any with me. I ran into the
entrance of a building and someone grabbed my arm and took me inside. âThere’s
an injured man. Take pictures. Show the world the American democracy,’ he
said.’
(For pictures and gallery information: http://www.photographicnyc.com/)