then something rebels against your concentration, something undermines the very purity of your pity. Also to be the object of photographic contemplation.
‘An act of heroism’ suggests always, if only at first, something glamorous and emblematic: a handsome face turned to some dangerous prospect. We say of certain things that they are not only done but must be seen to be done. We say this, for example, of Justice. When that dead pilot was awarded the D.F.C., you could say that heroism was seen to be done. This is not to suggest there was no actual heroism, but the actual heroism may have been of a quite different kind from that which went recognized. After all (but again this seems almost blasphemous), what choice did he have? Was it as though he willed his life to culminate in an act, and that particular act, of heroism? And, at the terrible moment, what
else
could he do, with a parcel of hot metal up his rectum and a dead flight engineer and a damaged aircraft? Appeal to some hidden power and say: Wake me out of this dream?
When I took that photograph I thought to myself, if not in so many words: Let this have no aesthetic content, let this be only like it is, in the middle of things. Since I knew already that photos taken in even the most chaotic circumstances can acquire, lifted from the mad flow of events, a perverse formality and poise. I thought this as I took the picture. I did not think of the pilot. Was this an act of inhumanity?
The two orderlies are staggering slightly. It is like some joke version of the exhausted athlete being carried in triumph. One second please, face the camera please (but his eyes were shut to the world), to record your moment of glory.I half hid behind the swung-open ambulance door, then stepped out and clicked.
My first picture of a dying man.
Until I went to Nuremberg in ’46 I had not seen, at ground level, any of the damage done to Germany. I was not, though I might easily have been, amongst those photographers specifically despatched to record the progress of Liberation and the evidence of defeat. Nor was I amongst those first on the scene, who would never forget being present, when the camps at Buchenwald, Belsen and elsewhere were opened. But a future, now late colleague of mine, Bill Cochrane, was. Our careers evolved along similar lines, since Bill at the time was a War Office photographer, just as I was accredited to the Air Ministry. Some of Bill’s photographs were used in the Allies’ propaganda campaign of post-war ‘enlightenment’ and de-Nazification, others found their way into the mass of documentation submitted to the Nuremberg prosecutors.
Seeing is believing and certain things must be seen to have been done. Without the camera the world might start to disbelieve. At the newly liberated camps local civilians were made to file past the emaciated corpses in order to witness facts of which, despite their proximity, they had no greater knowledge than the newly arrived Allies. There is a photo of Bill’s showing this procedure taking place. A man is looking at something near his feet, with an expression of confusion on his face. You cannot tell if the confusion is the result of what he is looking at or the knowledge that he is being photographed.
Which is worse: to have to look at piles of corpses? Or to photograph people looking at piles of corpses? Would Bill have taken this photo if he were not ordered to do so? Was it an act of inhumanity?
Bill Cochrane was killed in the Congo in ’63, trying to take pictures of an ambush when he had already been hit in the leg. His death itself became a minor news item, there was a half-columnreport, a brief obituary, and I was asked to attend a memorial service at St Bride’s. Posthumous honours came his way. Should journalists receive medals and citations? For courage and sacrifice in the service of truth? Is it truth they are after, or are they just trying to be heroes?
Bill and I worked together for a while on the
‘An act of heroism’ suggests always, if only at first, something glamorous and emblematic: a handsome face turned to some dangerous prospect. We say of certain things that they are not only done but must be seen to be done. We say this, for example, of Justice. When that dead pilot was awarded the D.F.C., you could say that heroism was seen to be done. This is not to suggest there was no actual heroism, but the actual heroism may have been of a quite different kind from that which went recognized. After all (but again this seems almost blasphemous), what choice did he have? Was it as though he willed his life to culminate in an act, and that particular act, of heroism? And, at the terrible moment, what
else
could he do, with a parcel of hot metal up his rectum and a dead flight engineer and a damaged aircraft? Appeal to some hidden power and say: Wake me out of this dream?
When I took that photograph I thought to myself, if not in so many words: Let this have no aesthetic content, let this be only like it is, in the middle of things. Since I knew already that photos taken in even the most chaotic circumstances can acquire, lifted from the mad flow of events, a perverse formality and poise. I thought this as I took the picture. I did not think of the pilot. Was this an act of inhumanity?
The two orderlies are staggering slightly. It is like some joke version of the exhausted athlete being carried in triumph. One second please, face the camera please (but his eyes were shut to the world), to record your moment of glory.I half hid behind the swung-open ambulance door, then stepped out and clicked.
My first picture of a dying man.
Until I went to Nuremberg in ’46 I had not seen, at ground level, any of the damage done to Germany. I was not, though I might easily have been, amongst those photographers specifically despatched to record the progress of Liberation and the evidence of defeat. Nor was I amongst those first on the scene, who would never forget being present, when the camps at Buchenwald, Belsen and elsewhere were opened. But a future, now late colleague of mine, Bill Cochrane, was. Our careers evolved along similar lines, since Bill at the time was a War Office photographer, just as I was accredited to the Air Ministry. Some of Bill’s photographs were used in the Allies’ propaganda campaign of post-war ‘enlightenment’ and de-Nazification, others found their way into the mass of documentation submitted to the Nuremberg prosecutors.
Seeing is believing and certain things must be seen to have been done. Without the camera the world might start to disbelieve. At the newly liberated camps local civilians were made to file past the emaciated corpses in order to witness facts of which, despite their proximity, they had no greater knowledge than the newly arrived Allies. There is a photo of Bill’s showing this procedure taking place. A man is looking at something near his feet, with an expression of confusion on his face. You cannot tell if the confusion is the result of what he is looking at or the knowledge that he is being photographed.
Which is worse: to have to look at piles of corpses? Or to photograph people looking at piles of corpses? Would Bill have taken this photo if he were not ordered to do so? Was it an act of inhumanity?
Bill Cochrane was killed in the Congo in ’63, trying to take pictures of an ambush when he had already been hit in the leg. His death itself became a minor news item, there was a half-columnreport, a brief obituary, and I was asked to attend a memorial service at St Bride’s. Posthumous honours came his way. Should journalists receive medals and citations? For courage and sacrifice in the service of truth? Is it truth they are after, or are they just trying to be heroes?
Bill and I worked together for a while on the
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