Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteTo open his online exhibit, soon to be included in a released volume by way of the University of Chicago Press and promoted by a pretty good national book tour, war photographer Ashley Gilbertson notes, "A battle finished when the last shot is fired, when the last man falls." [2]
Taking my cue from the online exhibit, the both acerbic and whimsically titled book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War by Ashley Gilbertson and Dexter Filkins looks like it will cover the look of the war from the earliest period of the invasion--"A portrait of Saddam was set on fire by my fixer", and there's the poster of Saddam going up in flames (in the war journalist's lingo, the "fixer" is the person who makes arrangements in-country and may serve as a translator, access scout, problem solver in a pinch, and such)--to about where we are with government forces, Iraqi, U.S., and others still struggling with rounding up insurgents and getting (one way of looking at the problem) the "monopoloy on violence".
Battles may indeed end with the last man fallen, but the Islamic small wars do not--there seems still an abundance of last men with serious firepower on their shoulders or ordnance attached above their two legs with instructions fairly wired into their heads as to where to deliver it. Moreover, from close to the first picture in the online series and throughout, the well known but much less illustrated cultural conditions of the war in Iraq come through in the photography.
At one point, the caption accompanying a picture of a civilian on his knees and pleading for his life in front of pointed weapons, notes, "Iraq forces at the scene said, "just shoot him."
There might be an Eddie Adams kind of story behind the photograph, but whether or not, the incident nonetheless signals the ambiguous relationship between stated rules of engagement and the gut-level calls and politics that have created horrific scenes--e.g., Abu Ghraib, al Haditha--that have badgered the government-side leadership throughout the war. One relies always on some inherent goodness in one's troops to produce assurance for noncombatants in conflict zones over time, so when they're able to exercise their own brutality in the "war rules" environment, some unpleasant truths come to light.
I generally defend the U.S., foreign national, and allied positions in the Islamic conflict zones, but as good as all may want to be, not all are as fair, forgiving, temperate, or disciplined as needed all the time, and the civilians effected rather earn through blood their own righteous indignation.
Let not all that tilt to the militant quilt work: Gilbertson's work also eloquently, silently tells in pictures the story of Suaada Saadoun, an Iraqi woman who got U.S. forces to forestall the eviction of her family from its home by Shi'ite milita. Triumphant for a day, Saadoun was assissinated the day following.
These days, one cannot purchase a book from Amazon without running into several of its cousins. I'm going to spare you the list that comes up beside or beneath Whisky Tango Foxtrot (WTF, lol) but note that the universal ability to observe war has improved by several levels of magnitude because of the Internet and related publishing: perhaps this time, if we look hard enough, flexibly enough, and with imagination, we'll see design and pattern never so clear in earlier and altogether (hard to believe) more clouded wars.
Here's the first of six segments of interviews with Ashley Gilbertson accompanying the release of his book. [3]
1. Gilbertson, Ashley and Dexter Filkins. Whisky Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
2. Gilbertson, Ashley. "Iraq". Online photo-exhibit, viewed October 11, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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