Interesting day was had today at the Imperial War Museum North, who with RedEye hosted a discussion on conflict photography. Contributors included Simon Norfolk – he was always a photographer I was aware of, but will pay more attention to, after hearing him speak about how rather than being a photographer of war, he was a photographer of imperialism. On his web site he writes:
“Traditional war reporting risks irrelevance if it only concentrates on what can be seen, what can be photographed and filmed when the ‘real’ war is taking place elsewhere. In the 21st century war is being visualised in the language of the 1950’s and that is bad for journalism and. ultimately bad for democracy”.
Other speakers included Sean Sutton who took the large photographs on display outside of the museum and works for the Mines Advisory Group, Jon Levy from Foto8 and David Campbell who is the Professor of Political Geography at Durham. The more I go to these sort of events the more I realise it’s the ideas rather than photos which are the more interesting. So although I’ve got no interest in war photography as such, I’ve come away with food for thought. Talking of war – I’ll pretend to be asleep when a battlescarred Mrs Dave returns from Eastlands after getting beaten in the 90th minute 🙂
Today’s picture is one from the dunni-archives and is my twist on the Spanish Civil War poster “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next”, which in a curious bit of serendipity I’ve discovered is in the Imperial War Museum’s collection, and is pictured (LEFT).
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