Civilians can find it difficult to relate to soldiers who have seen combat, who have pointed and a fired a gun at their predetermined enemy, who have witnessed their mates killed or returned changed. Photographer, journalist, and filmmaker Lalage Snow has photographed and interviewed soldiers in the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland before deployment, three months into their service, and days after their return home for a stunning new photo essay in The Telegraph. As you see their faces weathered, hardened, shaken, you can literally read the psychological toil of war. It gets particularly heartbreaking when a teenager who eagerly joined the force as a kid talks of crying every night. It gets you thinking about the war, its alleged purpose and its realities. It’s a heavy insight.
Professional photojournalist Benjamin Lowy was in Libya on assignment for three weeks in March, at the front lines of the Rebel and Gadaffi Loyalist battle and amidst the wreckage of Libyan towns. Between shooting a reportage with a DSLR, he used his iPhone for shooting these intimate, meticulously framed and automatically stylized images. Captured: a mushroom cloud from an exploding tank, uninformed Rebel soldiers praying after retreat, demonstrations in the public square, bodies torched in motor fire and smoldering shells of cars… all with the faux-Holga aesthetic. Thus, iLibya: Uprising by iPhone intentionally connects with today’s visually demanding public and Lowry believes that these images will keep “important stories” from “getting lost in the fray.” See them in our gallery. Warning: Some are quite graphic.
Irish photographer Richard Mosse looks at the fog of war and disaster through a literal rose-tinted lens, bringing unearthly color to the bleakest of scenes.
By using light-diffusion and infrared film, Mosse’s images and videos lend conflict-torn lands and disaster aftermaths an eerie, otherworldly character. By laying a Renaissance glow and Pop Art flair over tense and tragic photojournalism, he highlights the seeming unreality of the catastrophically real.
Mosse’s work also includes photos of Saddam Hussein’s vacant palaces, images of abandoned airplanes, and portraits of war-machine detritus, all spotlighting the ghostly feel of things left behind in the wake of often earth-shattering events.
In his graphic-novel memoir War Is Boring: Bored Stiff, Scared to Death in the World’s Worst War Zones, David Axe chronicles the unspoken ravages and less-than-romantic experience of being a war correspondent.
Loosely based on the web comic of the same name, Axe’s unconventional account is bolstered by Matt Bors’ stark illustrations. From fleeing a movie-theater mob in Somalia to hard-partying local guides in Lebanon, War Is Boring features engrossing adventures and encounters with the people and places that don’t make headlines.
In this series, graphic designer Adam Richardson juxtaposes images from the classic video game Space Invaders with actual photographs of US troops in Afghanistan. Seemingly simple at first, the import of these digitally manipulated images grows on you as Richardson explores the question of who the invaders really are. More photos after the jump. [via BuzzFeed]
Veteran’s Day gives us the chance to reflect on all of the service men and women, their sacrifice, and their innate bad-assness. Because, let’s face it, no matter what your stance on war, politics, or anything else, there is no draft anymore. These people are putting their lives on the line to protect us by choice. What could be more bad ass than a decision like that?
Nothing. So let’s celebrate the real heroes by rounding up some of our favorite fictional ones from film, shall we?
File under fascinating/disturbing: “This is an amazing collection of cinematic propaganda photographs from the U.S. Office of War Information that are on the Library of Congress website. They were made by a photographer named Alfred T. Palmer around 1942.” Aside from stirring up feelings of patriotism, the images warned Americans about foreign spies and targeted women recruits for factory work. More of his pics after the jump. [via i heart photograph]
