War photographs

• Consider the following images, as they appear on the screen....

1) What is being photographed? How do you suppose the subject of each photo feels?

2) Who is doing the photographing? How do you suppose the photographer feels?

How many wars/conflicts can you recognise?

What is the role of the war photographer?

Watch / Listen• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVZe4r

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• War photographer, Don McCullin, is interviewed about his exhibition.

• What did he find was the most difficult thing about photographing war?

War PhotographerIn his darkroom he is finally alone

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

The only light is red and softly glows,

as though this were a church and he

a priest preparing to intone a Mass.

Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

 

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays

beneath his hands which did not tremble then

though seem to now. Rural England. Home again

to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,

to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet

of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features

faintly start to twist before his eyes

a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries

of this man’s wife, how he sought approval

without words to do what someone must

and how blood stained into foreign dust.

 

A hundred agonies in black-and-white

from which his editor will pick out five or six

for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick

with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where

he earns his living and they do not care.

 

Carol Ann Duffy

The Poem

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJI9pMmJnnc&feature=related

Read the poem carefully and then work through these key points:

• What's the poem about?

Get to know the subject matter of the poem. • How does the poem work?

Look at the language the poet has used. Think about the sound the poem makes when you read it. Look at the form it's written in.

• Develop your ideas about the poem

What ideas does the poem give you? What attitudes does the poet have to the subject matter? What tone does the poem have - how would you read it aloud?

What tense is the poem written in? What is the effect of this?

How is the light described? Why do you think this is? Think of the word ‘darkroom’.

What is the poet’s tone? Why do you think this is?

• In her poem, Carol Ann Duffy tackles the rather challenging topic of war photographers.

• Are they blameless, or are they just doing a job?

• Consider the effectiveness of referring to ‘spools of suffering’ (line 2) and ‘all the flesh is grass’ (line 6).

How do these lines work to belittle the suffering of the people being photographed?