Though war is something that few of us have ever experienced outside of action movies and media coverage, students can come face to face with the horrors of war at the opening of the Tufts Gallery's newest exhibit.
"Envoys of War: Images by Group VII Photojournalists" showcases the work of five photographers: James Nachtwey, Ron Haviv, John Stanmeyer, Christopher Morris, and Alexandra Boulat. The opening reception tonight will begin tonight at 6 p.m. with a lecture by photographer Peter Howe and Fletcher School Professor Hurst Hannum.
"Envoys of War" tries to put a human face on conflicts that are often dehumanized by the media. War, the exhibit tells us, is not a distant force which cannot affect us, but is incomprehensibly overpowering and personal, destroying individuals even as it breaks down and reforms nations.
The five photographers whose work is on display are clearly no strangers to war. Their pictures come from Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq, following deadly conflicts around the world and making the human impact of war more accessible to those still on the home front.
All five are founding members of VII, a photojournalist agency that was started in 2001 in order to independently document conflict and injustice in the first years of the 21st century. The "VII" in the group's title refers to the seven photojournalists originally involved in the organization; they have since been joined by two more.
VII announced its formation on Sept. 9, 2001, two days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks struck New York City.
Two days later, James Nachtwey took VII's first photographs of war when the World Trade Center was attacked, only blocks from his Manhattan apartment.
Nachtwey's work is poignant and ethereal. He captured the World Trade Center collapsing with an enormous cloud, the foreground framed by the cross of a church a few blocks away. In another photograph, firemen stride over the wreckage in New York City, their forms barely visible through the dust clouding the sky.
Following the attacks, Nachtwey went to Afghanistan and Iraq as a photojournalist. His work in late 2001 documents a critically wounded Taliban soldier, left gushing blood by the side of the road as forces loyal to Americans walked by to watch him die. A photograph from Iraq in 2003 shows a man pushing a gigantic head of Saddam Hussein down the streets of Baghdad in a homemade cart, stolen from a statue that was toppled by invading American forces.
Ron Haviv has documented conflicts all around the world; his work on display dates back to the civil war in Yugoslavia in 1991. His haunting images capture Bosnians ducking out of the way of sniper fire, interrupted from a peace rally in Sarajevo, and the bare remains of a Kosavar Albanian who was burned by Serbian forces in 1999, his body nothing more than a white outline against the sterile ground.
All of the conflicts documented in the exhibit have made the news in their day, but the images captured by the photographers communicate far more than words without pictures ever could.
John Stanmeyer, working in Indonesia and East Timor in 1998, memorialized the struggle there, photographing a single protestor as he stood alone against a mass of riot police. Christopher Morris's work in Chechnya forces a human quality on the soldiers there, capturing them in faux Gucci sweaters and "England" t-shirts as they wait by the side of the road with their weapons.
In 2003, Alexandra Boulat traveled to Iraq in order to photograph the upcoming war. Though her work mostly centers on landscapes and inanimate objects - a Baghdad sky dark with oil smoke and candles sent by peace protesters down the Tigris River - the actions of individuals just off screen bring a haunting human face to the conflict.
Aside from the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, in the modern era, a foreign war has never been brought to American soil. As a result, those of us who live thousands of miles away from deadly conflicts have a hard time imagining what it must be like for the individuals who must live entirely mired in them.
"Envoys of War" documents the faces of individuals who have suffered in conflicts around the world, but it also functions as a physical embodiment of its title. The photographers whose work is on display are quite literally the envoys of war, the messengers who seek to communicate just what it is like to live in a world where death is not a distant figure lurking on the horizon, but rather is solid and present.
The exhibit is being hosted in honor of the 20th anniversary of EPIIC, a program within the Tufts Institute for Global Leadership.
Though few will ever see deadly conflict take such a personal role in their lives, putting a human face on its results may help to better understand what sort of impact war can cause. With such haunting, poignant images as its messenger, the effect is not something that visitors to "Envoys of War" will easily forget.
