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Getting the Whole Picture

Hand-picked photos to feed the flames of war

Let him who wishes to know what war is look at these series of illustrations Oliver Wendell Holmes

As you sit in your living room at 6 p.m. watching the evening news, the constant struggle for peace in the Middle East is brought up, once again; however, the highlight of the story isnt about the thousands of men dying for their cause, but it is of a single American soldier who was killed in an IED explosion some 100 miles away by, who the public would presume to be, American-hating terrorists. Do you ever wonder why the media prioritized the loss of a single soldier over the thousands of unnamed, innocent women and children caught in the crossfire of their own countys battle? Or, even the reasoning as to why there is conflict in the first place? Why are we there to begin with? You would begin to think that with the astonishing feats of technology that some major U.S. media outlet would have both sides of any war/conflict that the United States is involved in. Former U. S. Air Force Captain and Melville scholar H. Bruce Franklin explains in From Realism to Virtual Reality: Images of Americas Wars how the ever-expanding frontier of technology is not only making reporting and documenting these wars that were involved in much more simplistic and higher quality, but also easier to manipulate what the public actually sees. This dilemma has its roots all the way back in the 1860s during the Civil War. Photography was in its primitive stages, so primitive that the wetplate collodion process in the cameras required the figures in the developing photo to remain very still for very long periods of time; this meant there were

very few action shots of the war of any decent quality. However, the wars fallen masses provided the necessary immobility for developing a quality image, as well as putting the reality of war into focus. The gray-skinned and bloated corpses captured in Timothy OSullivans A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg spoke volumes for those who no longer could. This trend of sheer brutality captured in all of its glory continued into World War I. Photography, as well as warfare at the time, had evolved; photography with motion picture and war with machine guns, poison gas, and airplanes. Filmmakers who wished to capture live battles were strictly prohibited by various government and military personnel. Meanwhile, the discovery of the potential profits of propaganda films was in the works of being fully exploited. Soon, these films were in theatres all across the nation and actively convincing that the Axis powers, more specifically Germany, were the bad guys. The Unbeliver and Heart of Humanity are fantastic examples. Depicted in these movies is a murderous and lust-filled German officer who will stop at nothing to satisfy his lust for young, innocent women. Soon enough, these kinds of films were molding the public

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opinions about the war, ultimately supporting it. There was hardly any change in coverage of World War II, minus the abundance of war hero movies released after the wars end, such as Fighter Squadron, Sands of Iwo Jima, and Twelve OClock High. Fast-forward to the Vietnam War, and even those who have only heard about the events that went on during that war could tell you that it was one of Americas more inhumane and brutal wars its been involved in. The white-phosphorus strikes on the land, flamethrowers carefully aimed for the natives grass huts, chopper gunner runs obliterating anyone who wasnt in a spider-hole at the time, and many other advances in annihilation on all scales. Photography also had its advances, with color becoming a standard in the industry. As for the wars photography, one of the most influential and enduring single images from the Vietnam War, Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem had significance in more ways than one; the photo was taken within a mere second

war at the time: cut-throat, no holds barred, takeout-as-many-as-you-can. Movie directors took notice of this and somewhat turned the tables on the reality. For example, in P.O.W.: The Escape, theres a scene where an American P.O.W. is soon to be executed with a revolver by a North Vietnamese P.O.W. camp commander: a heavily transformed take on the Nguyen execution. Around the Gulf War is where the U.S. government finally decided enough is enough and tightened their belts on what reporters and broadcasters can actually report and broadcast. Matter of fact, the government set up pools of selected reporters and photographers, confined them to certain locations, required them to have military escorts when gathering newsand subjected all written copy, photographs, and videotape to strict censorship. When the fallen soldiers bodies were being transported from the battlefield back home, the government banned all press from Dover Air Force Base. The ACLU had brought a legal argument claiming that this was trying to shield the public from disturbing images, to which the Pentagon replied it was only protecting the grieving familys privacy. As for todays military conflict, there have been national headlines about information not being released to the public; specifically Pfc. Bradley Mannings sentencing of 35 years imprisonment for espionage after leaking top-secret documents. Those documents included reports of U.S. helicopters gunning down Iranian

before the actual trigger pull. As for the execution itself, it was captured on film in color in its entirety. As inhumane as it may be, that was the reality of the

news reporters and pedestrians. Of course, the general public hadnt known about this until outlets labeled him a traitor for his actions.

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Overall, this trend of having misconstrued stories about military actions being directly proportional to photographical advances in technology is more than evident. H. Bruce Franklins article explains this in much more vivid detail along with more examples and points-ofview. I strongly recommend this article for anyone who now feels theyve been left in the dark, even if youre not a government conspiracist.