The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib
Sabrina Harman took hundreds of pictures to “just show what was going on, what was allowed to be done.” Thought provoking and like all the news about and from the now-acknowledged tragic debacle that is the invasion of Iraq, deeply troubling piece in the New Yorker, with photo of Harman by Nubar Alexanian, and 10 of her photographs. NSFW, obviously.
The article raises all sorts of questions about the role of photographers in and of armies, in war zones, as documenters, in collusion, collaboration or opposition, whether conscious or unconscious, in the atrocities they make choices to photograph, how the pictures are composed, for whom and why they’re set up, and so on. Endless questions. In the end, it’s rather like those arguments about silencing the BNP. Would we rather be without them? Yes. Do we need to see what they’re up to? Absolutely.
via Postman Patel
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