For a long time, in the early days of the war on Iraq, Abu Ghraib was a primary target for insurgents. Even before the photographs of torture were leaked, Abu Ghraib was mortared almost daily. Abu Ghraib held thousands of falsely accused men, the majority of whom were later released without charge, ceremony or apology.
Monica Haller‘s new book Riley and His Story is a collection of thoughts, diary entries and digital photographs from his tour of Iraq. For a period, Riley was a nurse in Abu Ghraib and the images from the medical tent are novel, uncensored, bloody.
Riley’s photographs from the hospital sits between snapshots from military vehicles, marines sat in paddling pools, goofy group shots, Al Franken (?) and decaying out-of-use planes.
This is the aesthetic we all know exists and we occasionally glimpse when there is interest, lawsuit or cultural re-use of military personnel snapshots in the media.
There must be millions of digital photos by American marines. Haller’s book is simultaneously a cleverly assembled piece of the wider dissemination of such imagery and an affirmation to the unexpected familiarity of such imagery.
A 21st century war is not a war without vernacular conflict photography.
Just as soldiers of WWI sent home words thus defining modern war poetry, so the soldiers of today bring home pixels and jpegs and define modern war imagery.
The singular prose, simile and letter-writings that painted a mind’s picture have been replaced by the multiple functionaries and fingers of digital observation.
As were the Abu Ghraib torture photographs, why shouldn’t we expect the next most iconic images of this century to be amateur snapshots? And why shouldn’t we be prepared for an equivalent violence in said iconic imagery?
It is curious that discussions about the lamentable loss of unembedded journalism have not always been balanced by discussion on the tumorous growth of ‘soldier-journalism’ (a term unsuitable, but an understandable extrapolation from the term ‘citizen-journalism’).
Whether you like it or not, the Canon PowerShot and its hand-held competitors own the future of war coverage.
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon buffered the cruelty of war, but there are few artists now. (We are grateful to Haller for being such a thoughtful manager of Riley’s output.) Nothing is softened or made poetic/metaphorical. Laid bare. Perhaps, both the best and worst of scenarios we should expect is military censorship?
Monica Haller’s book is important not because it is Abu Ghraib and not because the images are snapshots made by American military personnel, but because it is a portent of an aesthetic already upon us. And we are in denial.
From here on in photography is ugly.
I found this project through Alec Soth on the Little Brown Mushrooms blog, via LensCulture.
A video interview with Haller is permanently available at LBM vimeo.
A sizeable preview pdf (over 100 pages) of Riley and His Story is available here.
Riley and His Story has a website. You can find out more about Monica Haller here, here and here.
Prison Photography 
3 comments
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February 23, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Pala
Hi.
“Civilian/soldier journalism” was supposed to ensure that the wars of the twenty-first century would be documented to an extent unprecedented, at least as compared to a twentieth-century that saw the monopoly of communication in the hands of professional journalists (through print media, etc).
And yet! And yet where is this? This is the era of the camera phone and youtube and twitter and all the rest. But I’m not seeing it. Is there somewhere I should be looking? I did quick googles for things along the lines of “Soldier journalism” “photographs of iraq by soldiers” etc., but am yet to find anything substantial. The “Riley and his story” preview is the most I’ve ever seen of this reported phenomenon. It gets talked about so often and yet we’re not seeing it. Are we just not looking for it?
In short, I was hoping you could direct me to some of this “soldier journalism”.
Thanks, and thanks for writing this brilliant blog. I haven’t been a long-time reader, but have been finding it incredibly insightful since subscribing.
Yours &c.
February 24, 2010 at 12:06 am
petebrook
Pala. It’s a really fine question. As I said in the post, I have no doubt there are millions of digital images on Sandisks, hard-drives and laptops right across America. There are likely many reaons we don’t see them:
The soldiers don’t want to share them; the Army has encouraged suppression of the images; there is generally an air of exploitation/unpalatability about the parading of war imagery; “soldier-journalists” don’t think they’re important; military personnel don’t want to see images used in the wrong ways by the media; the images are souvenirs and never made nor intended for large audiences; the media has it tried and tested methods of war reporting; the media generally uses non-professional photographs when the story is about the photographs (ie, Abu Ghraib) – what use would the New York Times have for soldiers snapshots?; the public expects a naivety of soldier digital shots – which is as much a misconception as the pedestal that beholds pro-photographers.
Would there be an audience for an online vernacular photographic archive of 21st century American militarism?
Meanwhile, you can watch this low-fi video actaully pieced together by professional Evan Vucci: http://www.evanvucci.com/cribs-iraq
February 27, 2010 at 1:03 am
Pala
Thanks for the response.
And I find it incredible to consider the “millions of digital images on Sandisks, hard-drives and laptops”, not just across America, but across the world.
I don’t know whether there will ever be a _market_ for such an archive, I do however _hope_ that as the way we handle our digital possessions evolve, more of these “personal” media become by default public.
I would appreciate, should you come across any (as you are more likely to do so than myself), you would post links to other citizen-/soldier-journalist media (particularly online).
Thanks for the link to Evan Vucci’s video, I found it very interesting.