Brighton Photo Biennial 08’ - University of Brighton Gallery - “Iraq through the lens of Vietnam”

This exhibition compares the Vietnam war and the ongoing Iraq war through photographs from both sides in both wars. Some of which have rarely been seen in the west.

The first impression I got from walking around the exhibition was how real everything felt. Regarding the Vietnam photographs, although I knew that this war occurred from reading about it and watching the movies. It still felt slightly fictional in my mind.By viewing these, in some cases horrific photographs, somehow it really hit home that this wasn’t fictional at all, but was a major historical event. I think the reason for this was the photographs, in my view, portray the human aspect much better than movies or to a lesser extent books. As these are the actual people involved in the war looking back at you.

With that said, the side of the exhibition I was most interested in was the photographs from Iraq. As this is a war I have lived through and still ongoing and one where my views have not been influenced by any movie.

I firstly began looking at the photographs from Guantanamo Bay where the Iraqi detainees were tortured and humiliated by U.S troops. This was a major interest because I had just recently finished a book by the well known journalist Jon Ronson called “The Men who Star at Goats”. In it he depicts some of these incidents of torture and humiliation. One torture technique which was heavily covered in the book was torture through the use of sound. This torture was where a detainee would be hooded, put into a metal container, and then blasted with a single music track playing in a loop for up to 12 hours. In some cases the U.S troops used the Barney the Dinosaur theme tune in others it was Metallica “Enter Sandman”. It was hard to conclude if any of the photography on show depicted this torture.

The next part of the exhibition I stumbled upon was the propaganda element of the ongoing war. Here two large walls were covered with various small photographs. The first had a lot of smiling Iraqi’s, mostly children, in various situations with U.S troops. These images been released to the press.The second wall was full of photographs, again small, taken by Iraqi civilians on mobile phones and other digital media devices. These horrific images show the truth of what really is going on.

When the leaving the exhibition I though that although both wars were very similar in stature. There were two major differences:

The first was the difference in how each war was reported. In Vietnam for instance Photographic Journalists were free to do and go wherever there liked. These journalists were called unilateral’s. Regarding the Iraq war journalist are embedded in a particular U.S troop, where photographing dead soldiers is forbidden. Thus shielding the press to what the U.S army feels the public should see.
The second major difference was the level of respect between the U.S army and there advisories. During the Vietnam War the U.S troops although hating there enemy they still felt a respect for them and the “fighting spirit”. This respect seems to have vanished with regard to the Iraq War. Here U.S troops have decided that it is ok to humiliate the Iraqi’s where possible.

This for me is a very worrying part of the ongoing War…