[ad_1]
Sign up for our breaking news emails to get real-time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox for free
Sign up for free breaking news emails
HEvery day, hundreds of photos from battlefields around the world flood the news telegraphs, inviting viewers from afar to be drawn into the horrors that warring parties inflict on each other.
Do the battlefield photographers who source these images put themselves into dire and dangerous environments out of a sense of duty? thrill? salary?
Peter van Agtmar, who spent many years in Iraq and Afghanistan with a camera, provides a nuanced answer in his new book. A Look at America: A Diary of War and Homelandpublished this month by Thames & Hudson.
As the title suggests, Washington, D.C.-born Magnum photographer Van Agtmar had America on his mind when he was working. He was not a dispassionate recorder of events, but a man deeply concerned with the current state of his country and how it was being affected for generations by the war effort.
“Why do wars continue? That’s who we are…we have enough to mess things up anyway,” he writes.
He was obsessed with war from an early age, when the United States first took up arms against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the Gulf War. In the preface to his latest book, he describes his nine-year-old self as being reminded of the patriotic maelstrom that followed Desert Storm and the parallel publication of what we would now call “content.” He describes in detail how he was attracted to it.
By 2005, Van Agtmar was 24 years old but still obsessed with the war. It had been two years since the US invaded Iraq, so he enrolled to join the US military as a built-in photographer and then went to Afghanistan.
look at america combines these tour photos with domestic photography to build a broader perspective on the post-9/11 American experience, exploring nationalism, the election of Donald Trump, militarism, and race and class in American society. It also covers traces of.
Van Agtmar, now 43 and living in Paris, reflects on the years he spent in a conflict zone.in a recent interview guardianHe said he was experiencing a period of “moral turmoil.”
“Traditionally, photographers are meant to work with a position of authority and a clear sense of calm, but I had nothing to do with that,” he said. “For me, professional and personal are all connected. With this book, I wanted to make it clear that I am always an uncertain and confused observer.”
Van Agtmar’s previous books Disco Night September 11th (2014), The murmur of the threshold (2017) and sorry for the war (2021) all focus on post-9/11 America in some sense.and look at americahe collects images from these books, along with dozens of unpublished photographs, to guide readers through memories and thoughts about the events and the meaning of his work.
Van Agtmael is the director of the Arab Documentary Photography Program and a full member of the prestigious Magnum Photo Group since 2013.
He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a W. Eugene Smith Grant, several World Press Photo Awards, and an ICP Infinity Award.
A Look at America: A Diary of War and Homeland is available from Thames & Hudson here
[ad_2]
Source link
