Picturing Afghanistan: the photography of foreign conflict
New York:
Hampton Press
(2012), xiii, 199 pp., illustr., bibliogr. p.161-183, index
ISBN 978-1-61289-039-5
"Picturing Afghanistan is an in-depth account of the Euro-American visualization of the conflict in Afghanistan. Comparing images in public affairs, psychological warfare, journalism and the photobook, the author argues that there are no strong boundaries between photography in war and photography about war. He shwos how and when the media have adopted, extended and counterframed the public affairs discourse of militarism and humanitarianism, and how and when public affairs rely on the aesthetic codes of photojournalism. Instead of enforcing a unified interpretation, the author considers photography's ambiguous and contradictory aspects. It is argued that, even within the conventionalized genre of photojournalism, photographs of conflict do not merely promote unity and social cohesion but express anxieties associated with the breakdown of imagined communities." (Back cover)
Contents
Photographs and Frames -- Photography and Theory -- The Concept of the Frame -- Using Social Semiotics for Frame Analysis -- The Photojournalistic Register and Genre -- Visual and Textual Frames -- Two Examples -- Official U.S. Views -- Photography and Propaganda -- A Soldier's Story -- Paper Bullets -- The White Man's Burden -- Photo-Texts In/About War -- Western European Press Views -- Photography and the News -- Initial Responses Across the Atlantic -- The Framing of Combatants and Technologies -- Visualizing Leadership in Wartime -- Home Fronts in a Globalized World -- Refugees: Threatened and Dangerous -- The Civilian Body as Battleground -- Photography and Info-Graphics -- Invisible Afghanistan -- The Photo-Book -- Photography and the Documentary Tradition -- War as Quest -- Dystopian Landscapes -- The Photo Studio as Heterotopia -- The Otherness of War -- Conclusion
