imaging imperial information wars

For those would be Fine Art Photogrpahers who insist on believing that 'photography does not change anything'  , this is a bit of an eye opener.  why would anyone want to control it if it did not effect "the  domination of the information environment. " No language other than  lens based language of the  camera effects that info war  more. 


Colonel Rick Long of the US Marine Corps appeared to confirm these worst fears with these words: 'Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment.'

academic and writer David Campbell took photographers covering Iraq and Afghanistan to task for the limited and restricted vision of these conflicts their work provides. 'Embedding photojournalists with combat units was one of the military's greatest victories in the Iraq war,' he stated. 'By narrowing the focus in time and space to the unit they were with, the images produced put brave soldiers front and center, with both context and victims out of range.'

For Fazzina the implications of embedded journalism are profound. 'Audiences are really beginning to loose sight of what war is and the devastation it causes,' she says. For Smith, control is the main issue: 'The mainstream media are allowing the British government and military to get away with it.'


Perhaps what we recall from Iraq above all are those spooky Abu Ghraib prison pictures, trophy snapshots taken by soldiers. Maybe this is the final cost of the embedded system and the limited vision it offers - we see more and more images and remember less and less.



http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/report/1645945/enemy