Clean Hands Give No Comfort - Frontline Photography
- Nick Terrell
Humanity in War: Frontline Photography since 1860
ICRC. Selected by James Nachtwey; Text by Caroline Moorehead, $AU 89.95
Red Cross personnel are the foot-soldiers of the Geneva Convention - countries who subscribe to the conventions also financially sustain the organization. But even this fairly desirable arrangement – a neutral body funded by numerous different countries and corporate bodies to impartially administer aid across the globe – is ethically fraught. The Red Cross can voice an undisguised rejection of war, but can they afford to reject funding from nations that pursue their ends through conflict? Subscribing to the conventions does not necessarily equate to following them. The threats of globalised terrorism, for example, have convinced even ostensibly sophisticated and morally enlightened governments to renege on human rights in the interest of paranoid perceptions of expediency. The United States funds the Red Cross, but its attitude to prisoners taken in the ‘war on terror’ defies the Geneva Convention. Any actions taken by the Red Cross on behalf of these prisoners, or the injured combatants and civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, will have been funded at least in part by the perpetrators. Does that make contributions from the US and their allies blood money? Has the Red Cross become a way for cynical nations to offset expedient travesties?
The International Committee of the Red Cross came into being in the early 1860s, after Swiss businessman Henry Dunant’s account of the horrific aftermath of a battle between French and Austrian forces galvanised philanthropists in Geneva to draft guidelines for more humane conduct in the theatre of war. The guidelines became the first Geneva Convention, and broad international compliance to its terms cleared the way for a neutral provider of medical and humanitarian relief to set about alleviating some of the catastrophes of war. The idea of a body such as the Red Cross – an organization operating outside the partisanship, the strategies and the ideology of warfare – had been a guiding influence and inspiration in the formation of the Geneva Convention. Intimate with the negligence and cruelty of war and the negligence of suffering that goes hand in hand with any large scale conflict, the founders of the Red Cross expressed a pragmatic purpose from the outset ‘once we have voiced our undisguised rejection of war, we must take it as it is [and] unite our efforts to alleviate suffering.’
Humanity in War marks, just about, the 150th anniversary of the Red Cross. And at a time when the costs and risks of ensuring that wars are played out in the most humane way possible are on the rise, the global economic instability of the last eighteen months has seen a drastic decline in donations to humanitarian NGOs. This decline comes with the ICRC on the verge of a large scale operation in Afghanistan. Now as ever, resources and profile are paramount.
Poland 1943 - Forensic scientists identify bodies from a mass grave.
Communications are always strategic - this poignant and compelling collection, with its curiously intertwined narratives of dark horror and fervent celebration, carries a proud, chin-out claim of pre-eminence. With fewer charitable dollars to go around, the ICRC are capitalising on an impressive heritage.
In World War I, the ICRC championed the rights of an unprecedentedly large population of prisoners of war. Their effectiveness was recognised with the award of the 1917 Nobel Peace Prize. During World War II, the ICRC was again active in tracking the millions of combatants in POW camps and monitoring their conditions, but attention also turned to the provision of relief as supply lines and economies were disrupted across the continent.
WWII, Germany - railcar filled with bodies from a nearby concentration camp.
The organization believed that by speaking out about atrocities and denouncing the Nazi state’s flagrant abuses of human rights, they would have lost access to the millions of soldiers who remained in German POW camps. This dilemma crystallises an identity crisis that has always been at the heart of the Red Cross. It is the kind of dilemma that recurs whenever the organisation seeks to gain concessions from warlords, guerrillas, dictators and rogue states in order to then alleviate the suffering that underwrites their power. Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the Nazi’s procedural genocide the ICRC realised their relevance had been challenged. They began to realise perhaps that their moral authority was not only vital in gaining international legitimacy and public support, but that the power to condemn which it granted, could be as effective in the alleviation of suffering as anything they could do on the margins of a conflict.
Ideally, the Red Cross sits outside politics. In reality, though, strict neutrality undermines moral authority (especially in the face of atrocities) - it deflates the altruistic and humanitarian ideals which keep the Red Cross buoyant. The ICRC’s neutrality was critical in gaining bipartisan access and cooperation in the midst of conflict, but the stain left by WWII shows how easily neutrality can be seen to tacitly condone atrocities. Even though this lapse jeopardised the good faith the Red Cross had earned, it also confirmed that people all over the world had begun to look to the organization for moral leadership.
Rwanda 1997 - Father searches for a picture of his lost child.
The Red Cross will never be free from such dilemmas or from the need to make ethical compromises. Due to its origins, the Red Cross is perceived as ideologically aligned with the West, and its purposes are sometimes viewed with suspicion by those who oppose Western agendas. Since the 1980s, the Red Cross insignia has become less and less potent as a signal of neutrality capable of warding off hostilities. In the 21st century, old fashioned war (between the uniformed armies of nation states) has further given way to new ‘anarchic factionalism’ where traditional checks and balances and ethical accountability are absent.
With military conflicts increasingly deviating from the conventional patterns of engagement, the capacity of the Red Cross to intercede on behalf of the suffering will be determined more and more by whether they can afford to maintain their presence among combatants who have no respect for the neutrality or ideals of the organization. Even if they can afford to do this, would that be within the spirit of the organisation?
To sustain its presence in Somalia in the early 1990s, the ICRC had to accept the necessity of employing 2600 gunmen. Without armed protection, ICRC personnel, warehouses and convoys, would have been preyed upon by whichever factions or groups had sufficient numbers and weapons. There are certainly more ethical dilemmas ahead - if the security forces which Red Cross personnel must rely on to carry out missions in areas where the Geneva Convention carries no clout, become de rigeur, what happens when it becomes necessary to wage battle in order to alleviate suffering?
Angola 2004 - Children in Kuito play on an abandoned tank.
The strengths of the Red Cross have been formed in the image of every major crisis it has attempted to alleviate, but the ethical dilemmas associated with these fragmented conflicts may necessitate a radical change in attitude or a more remote approach to alleviating suffering. The ICRC has lobbied successfully to limit the type of weapons that can be legally produced – such as land-mines, cluster bombs and blinding laser weapons – and for increased control of the resources available to unconventional combatants. If ‘anarchic factionalism’ continues to define fluid battlefields with fluid ethics, this kind of assistance by proxy may become the Red Cross’s major function.
In 50 years time when the Red Cross is approaching its 200th anniversary, will the archived horrors from Africa and the Middle East have eclipsed the human toll and the psychic trauma of the 20th century’s two World Wars?
The unsettling images in Humanity at War contain a moral supplication, but they also demand a kind of fascination which has nothing to do with empathy, guilt or concern (which they also provoke). Is there an aesthetic thrill in being disturbed? Of course there is, and it’s a potent one too. But does this kind of thrill jeopardise that latent moral supplication which these images potentially communicate? Consider the emotional drama in the three images below and draw your own conclusions. In a collection that bears witness to many awful realities, the image on the left is, for me, the most haunting image by far.
Three Executions: Poland 1939, mass execution of Polish citizens (L); France 1944, French internees executed by the German Army (M); and Yugoslavia during WWII, a partisan soldier awaits execution (R).
Humanity in War has been compiled with a mindful avoidance of sensationalism or gore, but also with a thoroughgoing commitment to show the devastating consequences for those caught in the midst of conflict. No Disasters of War here then, no mutilated corpses, very little blood. If the images above are suitable for improving contemplation (and surely they are) where should we draw the line, and why?
Introducing the collection, the ICRC’s President, Jakob Kellenberger, suggests that photography “far surpassed previous sketches and paintings in its ability to communicate the full brutality of war and the suffering it inflicted, on both combatants and civilians.” What type of communication is it, then, that the Red Cross are interested in? What type of communication is it that photography does better than Goya, Callot or Otto Dix?
The immediate and the direct appeal – the gut response that looks past any artifice, and sees the image as the cool evidence of a mechanical eye. The semblance of objectivity, a window on reality. Typically, though, the frontline photographer sees with the same eyes as his or her prospective audience. They select and, occasionally, they stage.
Pakistan 1972 - Children in Dacca pretend to be soldiers.
The archive began as a resource which the ICRC could call on “to demonstrate both the need for laws governing warfare and the role of the ICRC.” From the outset, these images were gathered together for their collective power as tools for lobbying and campaigning – to bear witness against injustice and suffering, and to show the ways in which catastrophe could be resisted. They contain a “depth and meaning,” suggests Kellenberger, “from which lessons can be drawn.” Or, as photojournalist James Nachtwey puts it in his introduction: “Widen the lens of history and you see many different places, but many similar images: the scattered dead, skeletal figures, eyes shining with horror and a trace of desperate hope, columns of refugees, destroyed cities and villages, rows of the sick, mass graves, shackles and chains, crying children, grieving mothers.” And in the midst of all that, “one of the few things that allows one to take heart is that these photographs also show people coming to the aid of those who are suffering.” The ICRC’s archive in total, and this selection from it, are a testimony to a recurring human tendency towards violence and brutality, but also to the recurring, and natural, impulse to support the vulnerable. These emblematic images characterise a human nature red in tooth and claw, but they also contain the visual narrative of collective mutual-aid.
Drawing on his professional experience with the Red Cross, Nachtwey points out a shift in the ICRC’s attitude to photographic reportage. There was a time when Nachtwey’s requests for access to certain situations or for information that might have augmented his work were “coldly refused, or received with thinly-veiled hostility, as if photography would have somehow corrupted or diminished or endangered the work of the ICRC, rather than supported it.” The consideration of ethical niceties seemed to dominate, there was “a sense that photographing a suffering person was, by definition, a form of exploitation, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.” Pragmatism has trumped any ethical doubts, and by now there are very few humanitarian aid agencies that have not harnessed the coercive power generated when financially and socially secure populations are made to confront and contemplate the suffering of others. Suffering is the ultimate adversary of humanitarian organizations, but images of suffering are also the greatest asset in soliciting public support.
Mozambique, 1993 - Internally displaced child sleeps at catandica camp.
Place any of these images in the context of an appeal (whether it’s to raise funds or awareness) and the appropriate response is a straightforward kind of consent or surrender: tell me what to do. Forget the Red Cross for a moment, though, take away the purpose of this book and see the images as a catalogue of pain, confusion, torment and abjection. Is it worse then to stare or to look away? Perhaps looking away is always the wrong reaction, but what is it then that will stop a book like this from becoming a consumable oddity, a little cabinet of horrors? Is it that the horrors are real? Could it be as simple as that? Or is it that every image has the potential to voice a moral appeal, regardless of whether it has been co-opted into some kind of communications campaign?
Indonesia 2005 - Displaced child at a water distribution point.
According to Nachtwey, it was in the early 1990s that the ICRC really began to embrace the power of photojournalism. The Somalian famine of 1992 confirmed for the ICRC how influential the publication of pictures could be in expediting the mobilization of aid and funding. From that point on, the ICRC embraced the media and took full advantage of the direct access it could offer to the sitting rooms and kitchen tables of the developed world. Of course, the role and the influence of the mass media in covering remote conflicts had been radically redefined during the Vietnam war 25 years earlier. The ICRC may have accepted this shift fairly late, but its photographers had learnt how to speak to moral constituencies in the developed world long before.
It’s hardly surprising then that there should be a noticeable difference in the type of photography that predominates from the 1970s (and particularly after the mid 1980s, when aid became a media affair) to the present. I don’t know if it’s quite right to point to an increasing tendency to address and engage a public, but in the subject matter and in the composition, there is a change that just about coincides with the shift from black and white images to colour.
Franco-Prussian War, Switzerland 1871 - French internees at the Temple de la rue Marterey, Lausanne.
The older images in Humanity in War are on the whole more archival. They participate less openly in any worked out rhetoric, and suggest a more instinctive impulse to record and comprehend moments of extremity. Of course, there is a rudimentary kind of propaganda going on (there is never any shortage of Red Cross insignia throughout the collection) but these images have more in common with crime scene photography and procedural documentation (confirming challenges faced, goals attained and projects completed) – they are images that might feature in an annual report or a history book rather than a public appeal.
One of the exceptions is one of the earliest images, from a time of posed photography, which offers a condensed and stylised depiction of many varied aspects of war. Essentially a group portrait, it contains the symbols and trappings of battle, while remaining quite apart from the actual thing (above, from the Franco-Prussian War, 1871). out in a style that democratises the celebratory principles of history painting. As the technology becomes more portable and the processes quicker and cheaper, the images shift to a more concrete and immediate style of photographic reportage.
Left: El Salvadro Civil War 1986, a guerilla's body in Torola River; Right: Zaire 1978, burying bodies after fighting in Kolwezi
One of the advantages to a collection such as this is that it provides a platform for images that are too powerful or too disturbing to serve in any mass publicity or propagandistic role. These are the images which attest most plainly, perhaps, to the conditions in which ICRC delegates are pursuing their mission. Beyond that, though, they also offer a rare and powerful glimpse of the cruel and barbaric energies which developed nations are increasingly quarantining in the designated badlands of the globe.