” The remote areas where troops are stationed far from the military flag-pole, in valleys and on mountain-tops reveal the most about the occupation of Afghanistan. They are the corners of the world where details are hidden and guards are left down. ”
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Adam Ferguson, an Australian photojournalist and member of the VII Mentor program, has captured an emotion that I think has been proved illusive for many photographers– the war weariness of the average soldier, a weariness that is alluded to in words, but rarely shown in the one-sided coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan. Just to be clear, the one sidedness is not caused by an unwillingness of journalists to take risks– it is one sided because only half the conflict is accessible to someone not willing to risk, to paraphrase Eros Hoagland, a photographer for the NYTimes, having one’s head end up alongside one’s body. Embeds are forced through a narrow window, pushed by the army toward its own spin on the war. Sometimes the troops seem too fresh, too clean, and the coverage sanitized by the rules of the embed– essentially calling for no dead, on either side, on either side. These are wars in which deaths have become inconvenient facts, with even the caskets, until recently, of limits to photographers. Remarkably news agencies have been willing to accept these restrictions, even in the years when thousands of American came home in body bags, and have run stories with no mention of the conditions under which the reports have been made.
The military shapes the coverage in Afghanistan in the way that an advertising agency might create a campaign for a Fortune 500 company. Not that there is anything wrong with the military doing its job. Its just that the war is impossible to report in another way. By embedding in a far off outpost in Afghanistan, Ferguson was able to gain an intimacy with his subjects that might not have been possible under more watchful eyes. Or perhaps he just got lucky and found a group of soldiers that was more willing to let me look under the robo-cop suits that US soldiers wear in Afghanistan.
As someone who cut his teeth in the photo business looking through the file cabinets at Black Star in the 70’s, I was very familiar with the work of Robert Ellison and Larry Burrows. I had pulled their slides out of plastic sleeves, peered at them through loupes, against bright light boxes, edited the images and sent them off to Time and Newsweek. Looking at Ferguson’s work cross my computer screen, I felt as though I had seen some of these images before, and perhaps I had, as Adam points out quite astutely that all the photographers of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are influenced by the work that has come before them, the images of Matthew Brady, World War II, and the great war photographers of Vietnam, many who paid for their work with their lives.
Adam Ferguson was recently part of a recent on-line symposium held by Centre for Documentary Practice in Australia, an entity that exists under the auspices of Griffith University in Australia, and publishes the Australian PhotoJournalist, an annual journal that seeks to address issues affecting photojournalists.
What follows is a transcription of Adam’s introductory comments, questions asked of him by the panel, and follow-up answers to questions that I presented to Adam last week.
Here are Adam’s comments:
“I am going to present two stories that explore the lives of US troops in remote areas of Afghanistan. Both stories are part of an ongoing documentation of life on the front lines in Afghanistan. The remote areas where troops are stations far from the military flag-pole, in valleys and on mountain-tops reveal the most about the occupation of Afghanistan. They are the corners of the world where details are hidden and guards are left down.
“I’d like to make a point that this is embedded photography and I make no claim to present a balanced view of the conflict. This coverage is subjective. When the troops patrol I go with them, and in a sense we are in it together.”
I’d like to make a point that this is embedded photography and I make no claim to present a balanced view of the conflict. This coverage is subjective. When the troops patrol I go with them, and in a sense we are in it together. Its common knowledge that insurgents do not want journalists to go with them. Many insurgents direct their own stories through the web and are ideologically opposed to non-Muslims. So as an Australian my access to the war is limited, so I am with the troops. Eating and sleeping. And in a sense I am a sympathizer, and let me be clear about that, I am not a sympathizer of the war, I am a sympethizer of the grunt. So my work isn’t pro-war, its intended to be anti-war, and its intended to highlight the people doing their job, and to look at their aspirations as soldiers.
Eight years after the US led invasion of Afghanistan there is no resolution in sight, and when I embedded with the troops they were confused and they talk about it. US President Obama has the dilemma of whether to increase or decrease the presence in Afghanistan. The morale is low in the outposts. Many troops joined the Army in the spirit of post-9/11 nationalism, but they have trouble seeing how their fight relates to a larger war on terror. Our government, and the media as well, use words like Al Queda and Taliban as generalizations, often generalizations that help justify the war. They simplify an enemy and the simplify the conflict. Military intelligence officers have often pointed out to me that the bad guys, the US troops refer to the enemy as “the bad guys” are locals, so essentially the US invasion of Afghanistan was justified as a hunt for Bin Laden, Al Queda it was an attempt to stabilize a country that supported terrorism. But when the troops realized that the enemy they are fighting is in fact local, and there is little presence of foreign fighters or Al Queda, they become disillusioned. The Taliban are a splintered group of miltants that I believe is very hard to define. The troops get injured and they wonder why. As they serve they try and understand how its working in a larger sense. The see that the fight is futile. And they ultimately understand that they are not wanted by the locals. They enter these valleys, these remote areas and the locals do not want them there.
“Ultimately the mission in Afghanistan is as confused as the troops there, and I guess what I am trying to capture in my work is this confusion, this lack of resolution, and I am trying to instill this in my pictures.”
I am trying to personalize the soldiers experience, and I guess the challenge in doing this, the challenge in photographing war, is telling an audience something that they don’t already know about it. War can be inherently mundane, and the trick that I have found is to capture moments within this boredom, this lack of drama that can symbolize isolation to an audience. One of the things that I realized about war as I started to cover Afghanistan is that many of the troops perceptions about war are informed by Hollywood. I can recall a number of conversations with troops in which they talk about movies like Black Hawk Down and how movies like this inspired them to be soldiers. The reality of war is obviously very different– there is little glory or heroism. One is the main motivations for the work I undertake is to dispute the romantization of Hollywood movies and other miss-conceptions about war that exist within popular culture. I wish to leave a record that will inform an audience of my experience of war, in the hopes that this document will change perceptions about war.
As an embedded photographer you become somewhat an accomplice of the troops. When they storm a house you go in too. You run with them side by side to get the pictures. You don’t take your shoes off as is the local custom. So as a photographer sometimes I feel like an intruder. Is the document you create worth this intrusion?
Maybe, maybe not. But in the moment you are no different than a soldier and you have to reconcile that.
“I can recall a number of conversations with troops in which I talk about movies like Black Hawk Down and how movies like this inspired them to be soldiers. The reality of war is obviously very different– there is little glory or heroism.”
And then you are out walking again in broad spaces and you are wondering again, is the work worth the personal risk, does the work stimulate change or a deeper understanding of the war. Photography did in previous conflicts, Vietnam, photographs helped sway public opinion, they rallied an anti-war sentiment. (Editors Note: this was true at the end of the conflict but for the most part the news media during the Vietnam War was either pro-war or neutral.) This set of pictures that I am showing recently received a large amount of space in one of the largest news magazines in America, coupled with an on-line presentation. As far as publishing through print and an online news presentation, this work received a maximun amount of play. Despite all of this I am not sure that my pictures will have an immediate impact on the war or an impact on decisions that are made about it in the near future. My inspiration to become a photographer and to cover a conflict came from the tradition of the magazine photographer people whose pictures did make a difference, but I think in a sense we live in a world that is a little more complacent, its a different time, and while the web allows us to engage with more audiences than before, and it gives us advantages as story tellers, it also overwhelms our readers with triviality. In a sense the journalism get lost in the crowd, the people who care and want to know find out stories, but when I say it gets lost, it gets lost to the others and they could be our most important audience. My career as a photographer is relatively, young, so what I showed today is a work in progress, its the start of a long journey, but I don’t see my work as something that stimulate immediate change on the war in Afghanistan. But that doesn’t make my work, or the work of any other photographers who cover conflict, any less important. It actually makes it more important. Its our visual history and the work will still be there in a historical sense. What I am trying to say is that we may be able to create tangible change today, tommorow, or even in two or three years, but if we continue to tell our stories, one day eventually they will be heard. In depth and independent accounts will not let us forget the mistakes that we have made as a global community and one could only hope that it could lead is to more confirmed and considered actions in the future.
(The following questions were presented to Adam by participants in the on-line seminar.)
Could these images have been made without being embedded?
No, they couldn’t have been, so all of these pictures were made and facilitated by the US Army.
Were you embedded as an independent, or as part of the VII Mentor Program?
I essentially embedded as an independent, but I had the support of Time Magazine.
I think its a struggle when you are embedded, you go through these moments of fear, you are embedded with the troops but you are there by choice. Its hard work, I don’t mean to harp about myself and my own emotions, but I guess you kind of put that into the work, everyone else is just as confused as you are, the troops are as confused as you are, and you talk about that with the soldiers, you talk about the confusion and you know the lack of clarity that everyone feels, and the discontent that people feel for the decisions that have been made in Afghanistan, and I try and create that isolation in my pictures.
Did you work with writers on this assignment?
I have the privilege of working with some really good picture editors at Time. The first group of pictures that I took, we worked as a team, and navigated that story. She wrote about Afghanistan in a broader sense, and we used pictures that I found on the ground to narrate that story in a broader sense. The second set of pictures, that was my baby, and I had the opportunity to push it visually, and try and find pictures that don’t normally make it into the mainstream press and a magazine, and try and develop those pictures over a period of three weeks.
I have deliberately referenced some of the photography that was taken in Vietnam in some of my pictures, and I guess I have used this in a sense that Afghanistan is being labeled as Obama’s Vietnam. And if I can find things that reference that war, I have tried to do that in a sense, and thats purely to create a visual that will push something to the public and maybe get them thinking in a pro-active way.
How did the soldiers feel about your being there?
Adam: The soldiers are very media savvy so if I start to photograph a local in a circumstance that shows them to be a victim there has been times where a soldier has objected to me doing that, and they tend to think that you are showing a negative view of the war, or showing the soldiers in a bad light, by showing the way they victimize the people of Afghanistan. The soldiers can get upset about that. Most of the time you just try and be as subtle as possible, and if the situation heats up a bit the soldiers tend to focus on what they are doing and you are left on your own.
Has your perception of the war changed?
Adam: The longer that I have spent there the more that I come to understand that our governments justify the war there by referring to this larger terrorist network but I tend to think that is a fallacy and the more I spend time there the more I speak to military intelligence officers the more that I come to understand it a very flawed concept. Whats going on in Afghanistan is that there are so many tribal areas and little isolated communities that don’t want an outside influence so when troops roll into these places in Robocop outfits there is a local objection, and thats a cultural thing more than it is some axis of evil, or some terrorist network that is trying to topple the West.
Are there so many embeds that we are creating a media circus of images?
Adam: I am not sure if there is a media circus for images, but what I see is that people fail to stay for longterm trips so there a lot of pictires that flood the wires, but I don’t think there is a flood of images of people who are trying to penetrate the daily life of the troops.
I thought that I heard you mention that the grunts were ordered
to shave daily because they were being photographed, even where water
was not plentiful. If so, what are we to infer from this kind of
seeming micro-management?
Adam- I think it is actually management on a large scale. The soldiers get in trouble with their superiors if they are documented breaking military protocol, their superiors have been spoken to by their superiors, and so on. The U.S. Army has an ingrained Public Affairs system. I think we can infer from this that there is awareness in the military of media representation and the power it can have, and they try to control it. The military has learnt from coverage in the past that has damaged their public image. This has happened with things more extreme, like the execution of a puppy dog, and simple things like not shaving. Although, I have found if I spend enough time on a small Combat Operations Post the guys let their guard down.
You said that you consciously referred to images from the Vietnam War
in your photography. Can you think of any particular images from any
specific photographers that you have alluded to in your work?
Adam: One naturally stumbles across scenes in war that feel and look very Vietnam. They look this way because of both a mental bank of photojournalism that we have of Vietnam, and images we have in our minds that are drawn from popular culture – movies, writing, possibly even music. I definitely try to dispute many notions about war that exist in popular culture, but there is also so much symbolism found in war because we have seen in represented so many times. I think a photographer can use this symbolism as an advantage when trying to make a statement about war.
There are photos captured by Larry Burrows, the one of Marines in Prayer, standing in a line looking down, that I had in my mental image bank. It is a very unsensational moment that he captured very viscerally. The conflict in Afghanistan is not as intense as Vietnam, there are not the amount of civilian and military casualties (I don’t mean to underplay the tragedies that happen there because they do) and there is an immense amount of time when there is no action, just boredom. I definitely attempted to capture the intensity in my images that Burrows captured in his quieter photographs. I am making this reference because photojournalism helped stimulate a public response that is attributed to the withdrawal from Vietnam. There is no clear success in the U.S. occupation, as there wasn’t in Vietnam, and if I can make an emotional parallel between the two wars it may help the cause of asking the voting tax paying civilian population to ask a few more questions of the coalition presence. Although Afghanistan and Vietnam are very different wars on the ground, they personify a confused long-term war commitment of the U.S. I am also aware that we live in different times now, but at the very least if this parallel can be drawn in a historical context, it may shape the way a public reacts to future military invasions.
The similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan are often debated by
the right and left in the United States. Do the soldiers voice any
opinions about how their job relates to the one done by US soldiers?
Adam:
I can’t recall soldiers relating their experiences to Vietnam, or showing an awareness of any similarities between the wars in any articulate way worth mentioning.
Is there a single image that could possibly change public opinion
about the war in Afghanistan. If you could imagine such a picture
what would it look like, who could take it, and could it pass through
the rules that the military has instituted for photo embeds?
Or could the image be made by someone not in an embed?
Adam: A child killed in an ISAF air-strike being held by their grieving mother, or maybe a wounded soldier moments before death. They would be graphic, in color, and used on the cover and homepage of some major news organizations. Maybe I am being idealistic but I do my job in the belief that images will change public opinion, if not today or tomorrow, in the future, a record is made that will be considered. I guess any competent photographer caring and daring enough to be there could take such an image. The picture of the soldier wouldn’t pass military rules, photographers are not supposed to photograph dead soldiers that can be recognized. It would a face, an identity, somebody we can relate, to stir public opinion. There has been photos like the ones I describe taken, but they have been seen by enough people, so have not changed public opinion. News outlets need to be a little braver with what they publish, I think the public needs to be shocked.
Do we really understand war? What is the purpose of war if the
ideology seems so skewed and the basic tenets so flawed, as I think
they are in Afghanistan. What is the purpose? Ideology, business,
power?
Adam: I don’t think we understand war in a present context, or if we do we choose not to because we are not ready to understand it’s stark realities. When we look at war in a historical context we see that war has been used as a mechanism of colonialism.
As a photographer, what do you see yourself doing in 20 years?
Adam: Living somewhere very green and close to the beach. Experiencing places where the quality of life isn’t good, by that I mean pollution, violence and poverty, and also spending a lot of time away, traveling, feeling isolated, one tends to crave a more grounded earthy existence, well at least I do. I also hope to have produced a few significant bodies of work that I consider a positive contribution to our visual history.
What music is in your ipod, if you have one? What is your favorite band?
Adam: Radiohead, Powderfinger, Damien Rice, Sarah Blasko, Dr. Dog, Paul Kelly, The Smiths…..and much more. I like such a diverse range of music that it’s hard to have a favorite.
Thanks.
Adam Ferguson was born and grew up in New South Wales, Australia. He received a Bachelor of Photography from Australia’s Griffith University in 2004, and in 2006 he interned with VII Photo Agency in Paris, going on to work as Gary Knight’s assistant. In 2007 Adam moved to New Delhi, India, where he is currently based, working as freelance photographer covering South Asia.
Adam’s work has explored the many tensions, both social and political, that undermine the images of an economically booming India. Recently, he has focused on the war in Afghanistan.
Adam’s photographs have been published internationally by Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, Courrier International, The Financial Times Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, UNICEF and Human Rights Watch.
In 2009 he was selected as one of the Photo District News 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch and joined the VII Mentor Program working under Christopher Morris.
(Thanks to Allan Hill, online Online Editor Centre for Documentary Practice for providing 100Eyes with the video of the interview. You can join the Centre’s Facebook page at by following this link. You can also see more of Adam Ferguson’s work on his website, http://www.adamferguson.com or on VII’s website http://www.viiphoto.com.
