H Halawachy Picturing the American War in Iraq

Huda Halawachy: Picturing American War on Iraq: A Visual Discourse Analysis of Decoding ‘Death’ in the Photojournalist’s Lenses

For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite (James Nachtwey) (https://www.quotes.net/mquote/102671) Death, though certain , is horrible and scary when it comes to the fact that it is due to war and armed conflict for decades in a spot like Iraq! That said , people relate war to history through photography(Topbaş 2011).The current paper fundamentally is a portal to mirroring the photojournalist’s shots in making-meaning of death by letting audience to read what is unspeakable in photos. A collection of photos captured by three World Press Prizes winners photojournalists – Lynsey Addario ,Adam Ferguson ,and Ivor Prickett – were analysed focusing on their gallaries of photos on American war in Iraq. Focusing on traumatic events as war and conflict,Lynsey echoes that “I choose to live in peace and witness war – to experience the worst in people but to remember the beauty (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/lynsey_addario_715377).

Doing visual discourse analysis in photos ,though of different war eras in Iraq, semiotic approach is radically adopted in the analytical part so as breaking the code of Death in the selected photos .Icons and symbols are potentially workable clues for themetizing death in accordance with a variety of issues in a place of the world which is devastated thoroughly. It is the bombarded questions on which the current study is based : (1)Is it the shut that nearly kills the photojournalist being in the front line making them feel a momentum death as the causalities ? ,(2) Is the photojournalist’s role in war an eyewitness of the causalities’ physical bloody death or there could be other hidden deaths that could be decoded in the shots ?, and(3) Are the camera’s shots reliable enough to speak the messages on death in wartime? The study transpired a variety of death in the iconic and symbolic shuts in American war in Iraq. Other academic shots for future works on visual discourse , I remain capturing ! It is not the awards which the war photojournalist gets ,the humanity they raised,as a global issue, is a way to conceptualize death in the new millennium. I could read this between Adam’s lines when being awarded a World Press Award for one of his shots in Afghanistan saying: “When I won a World Press award for this photograph, I felt sad. People were congratulating me and there was a celebration over this intense tragedy that I had captured. I reconciled it by deciding that more people see a story when a photographer’s work is decorated” (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jun/18/war-photographers-special-report ).