|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Jasem Behbehani: Apocalyptic Images
| Article
# : |
20018 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1992 |
1,554 Words |
| Author
: |
A.D. Coleman
A.D. Coleman is an internationally published photography
writer, critic, and historian currently based in New York
City. |
History, as any historian will tell you, is not what actually happened at any given time; history is what the future constructs from the raw material of how those events were reported and interpreted. Instantaneous journalistic coverage helped shape the immediate development of events during the Persian Gulf war. At the same time, restrictions on press coverage during that heated conflict set precedents for government control of international conflicts--including photojournalism--that will reverberate for years.
News Management
Whatever their disagreements, due to the exigencies of war Saddam Hussein and President Bush clearly agreed that news was to be managed. The Iraqi despot's strictures were more severe than the U.S. military's, and exercised in more peremptory and brutal ways. Perhaps needless to say, this was true not only in Iraq but in the country it had invaded as well: During the almost eight months of the occupation, all camera and video equipment in the possession of Kuwaitis was subject to confiscation on sight. Those found with it, especially if caught using it, frequently vanished, never to be seen again.
One of the "disappeared" was the cousin of Kuwaiti photojournalist Jasem Behbehani, who was caught videotaping as the conflict escalated and has not been heard of since. Behbehani promptly buried his own equipment in the garden of his home and devoted his attention to the immediate problem of getting his wife and daughter out of Kuwait. He himself remained to bear witness though unable to record. While the Iraqi troops withdrew from Kuwait City on the night of February 25, 1991, he retrieved his cameras, his lenses, and his small supply of film. And as the sun rose on the morning of Tuesday the 26th, he walked out into the streets and went to work.
Minus a light meter, which meant estimating his exposures, Behbehani at the outset of his project was forced to choose his subjects thoughtfully and ration his film. Such premeditation is inconsistent with most present day war photography; but then Behbehani was, de facto, not really working as a combat photographer. Though he documented the arrival of the first liberating troops to arrive in his city from Saudi Arabia, and trailed squads from the Kuwaiti resistance as they rooted out the last remaining Iraqi soldiers, his real subject was not military combat but its aftermath. In that regard, he was functioning much as the British photographer Roger Fenton did in producing what is generally considered to be the first photographic coverage of war during the
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
