Afterimages

Book excerpt: Liam Kennedy here takes as his focus the ways in which selected photographers have sought to frame the activities and effects of American foreign policy, often with a critical perspective, and how their work engages the dynamics of power and knowledge that attend the American worldview. What is at issue in this book is understanding relations between the geopolitical conditions of visuality and the particulars of the image. Conditions of visuality, for Kennedy, are the ideologies that determine certain ways of seeing, that support actions and representations which establish (in)visibilities and which police the relationship between seeing and believing the American worldview. The individual photographers whose work Kennedy so insightfully dissects are those who have pushed the boundaries of photographic practice and who reflect critically on the contexts and scenery of war: Larry Burrows and Philip Jones Griffiths in Vietnam, Gilles Peress covering the Iranian Revolution, Susan Meiselas in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Ron Haviv and Gary Knight in the Balkans, Ashley Gilbertson and Chris Hondros in Iraq, and Tim Hetherington and Lynsey Addario in Afghanistan. These individuals expanded the conception and technical repertoire of photojournalism, receiving critical acclaim, provoking public and professional controversy, and often incurring great personal cost to themselves. Afterimages presents us with a revisionary understanding of the art of conflict photography. The images are often searing they sometimes demonize and dehumanize the enemy, but also humanize friend or victim: a focus on the human roots the range of feeling in such imagery, from horror to pity."