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not_mike's review against another edition
"Combat is the poor man's playground."
John Hoagland
John Hoagland
kateraed's review against another edition
4.0
A modern day "Dulce et decorum est," in photographs, with the added layer of revealing the propaganda ties. I wish Shields had laid out his argument more thoroughly (give us side-by-sides between these photos and the Rockwell/movies/glamor shots they mimic; spell out the way that each photo, particularly, contributes to a theme as a whole and the practical implications of what that means on the battlefield when a complacent country absorbs these images), though I also value that Shields trusts his audience enough to simply define a theme and then give us the curated evidence.
Never before have I realized how deeply war and masculinism are tied. Shields' work has highlighted, for me, that both war and photojournalism are feminist issues.
Never before have I realized how deeply war and masculinism are tied. Shields' work has highlighted, for me, that both war and photojournalism are feminist issues.
darwin8u's review
4.0
"When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience." - Edmund Burke
I liked the organization, the photos (of course), the premise, and even the design of this book. I bought this a couple months ago largely out of spite/support when I found out that the New York Times was suing the editor/author because he used actual thumbnail reproductions of actual New York Times front pages as a design element in the front pages of his book. Really? Has no one their taken even a basic PR course.*
Anyway, I appreciated how David Shields completely separated the text from the photos. While this is obviously NOT how they appeared on the front page of the glamorous, sue-happy "Paper of Record", these are photographs that need to be viewed in isolation. It would probably be best done in a museum, with each photograph owning its own space, but short of that ideal, the design here worked well.
The book is divided into ten sections, or themes: Nature, Playground, Father, God, Pietà , Painting, Movie, Beauty, Love, Death. Each section centers on, obviously, war photographs that appeared on the front page of the New York Times that fit into those broad visual tropes/gestures. Obviously, there are other types of war photos (torture, etc) that either didn't often find themselves on the front page of the New York Times or were less grand, less "artistic", and less applicable to this book's basic premise that by portraying the war with big themes (God, Nature, etc) on the front piece, the New York Times was promoting not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but war itself.
I was also fascinated by this subject because almost every one of my direct (and several of my wife's direct) male relatives and many, many of my male and female friends spent considerable time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Turkey, etc., during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (photo above is my little brother in Afghanistan). I was fascinated by these soldier's (they were all mostly soldiers) desire to capture on film not just their personal experience BUT the beauty of that experience. It is an interesting aspect of our need for aesthetics -- even among despair, death, destruction and ruin. We crave a harmony among the chaos and a warmth, that beauty brings, among the coldness of war.
Anyway, it is an interesting experience flipping through these photos while contemplating the horror AND the beauty of war and trying to reconcile what it means that we as a people need to constantly feed on both.
* I mean think about it for a minute corporate attorneys for the Gray Lady. Think hard. Think rationally. Yes, perhaps, David Shields might have exposed something negative associated with your paper, but it isn't like JUDITH "FUCKING" MILLER negative, or JASON "FUCKING" BLAIR negative. It is like saying, hey, there might be some negative things that happen when you make something inherently ugly look pretty day after day. It doesn't make you look great, but hell, print is dying and if this small feather gets added to what you are already carrying, NFBD. But sue? Now, all of a sudden, a small book from a small publisher in Brooklyn gets featured in blogs and NPR and shit. All of a sudden some dude in Arizona who would probably never hear about your damn problem with this David Shields using thumbnail photos of your front page gets pissed by your presumption and the fact that you are basically just suing because you can and you're kinda assholes at heart, so he decides to buy the book to: 1) support David Shields, 2) curiosity, 3) support this small Brooklyn publisher, and 4) basically tell the New York Times they are assholes in a passive way.
So, who wins really? David Shields and the small publisher in Brooklyn I imagine. I mean the law suit is probably frivolous, but he sells more books. I mean damn, don't you know how marketing works? Maybe if you spent more time figuring out how to market your damn paper in an age where most people get their news from Twitter, and LESS time badgering some guy who is making an 80% solid point about pictures and the press (which really only tangentially has anything to do you with the wrinkled Gray Lady), you could have kept me on as a paying subscriber and hell, I might have even conned my company into subscribing to your paper for me. Seriously, it just opens a whole can of beautiful worms regarding the priorities of your paper's management.
I liked the organization, the photos (of course), the premise, and even the design of this book. I bought this a couple months ago largely out of spite/support when I found out that the New York Times was suing the editor/author because he used actual thumbnail reproductions of actual New York Times front pages as a design element in the front pages of his book. Really? Has no one their taken even a basic PR course.*
Anyway, I appreciated how David Shields completely separated the text from the photos. While this is obviously NOT how they appeared on the front page of the glamorous, sue-happy "Paper of Record", these are photographs that need to be viewed in isolation. It would probably be best done in a museum, with each photograph owning its own space, but short of that ideal, the design here worked well.
The book is divided into ten sections, or themes: Nature, Playground, Father, God, Pietà , Painting, Movie, Beauty, Love, Death. Each section centers on, obviously, war photographs that appeared on the front page of the New York Times that fit into those broad visual tropes/gestures. Obviously, there are other types of war photos (torture, etc) that either didn't often find themselves on the front page of the New York Times or were less grand, less "artistic", and less applicable to this book's basic premise that by portraying the war with big themes (God, Nature, etc) on the front piece, the New York Times was promoting not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but war itself.
I was also fascinated by this subject because almost every one of my direct (and several of my wife's direct) male relatives and many, many of my male and female friends spent considerable time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Turkey, etc., during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (photo above is my little brother in Afghanistan). I was fascinated by these soldier's (they were all mostly soldiers) desire to capture on film not just their personal experience BUT the beauty of that experience. It is an interesting aspect of our need for aesthetics -- even among despair, death, destruction and ruin. We crave a harmony among the chaos and a warmth, that beauty brings, among the coldness of war.
Anyway, it is an interesting experience flipping through these photos while contemplating the horror AND the beauty of war and trying to reconcile what it means that we as a people need to constantly feed on both.
* I mean think about it for a minute corporate attorneys for the Gray Lady. Think hard. Think rationally. Yes, perhaps, David Shields might have exposed something negative associated with your paper, but it isn't like JUDITH "FUCKING" MILLER negative, or JASON "FUCKING" BLAIR negative. It is like saying, hey, there might be some negative things that happen when you make something inherently ugly look pretty day after day. It doesn't make you look great, but hell, print is dying and if this small feather gets added to what you are already carrying, NFBD. But sue? Now, all of a sudden, a small book from a small publisher in Brooklyn gets featured in blogs and NPR and shit. All of a sudden some dude in Arizona who would probably never hear about your damn problem with this David Shields using thumbnail photos of your front page gets pissed by your presumption and the fact that you are basically just suing because you can and you're kinda assholes at heart, so he decides to buy the book to: 1) support David Shields, 2) curiosity, 3) support this small Brooklyn publisher, and 4) basically tell the New York Times they are assholes in a passive way.
So, who wins really? David Shields and the small publisher in Brooklyn I imagine. I mean the law suit is probably frivolous, but he sells more books. I mean damn, don't you know how marketing works? Maybe if you spent more time figuring out how to market your damn paper in an age where most people get their news from Twitter, and LESS time badgering some guy who is making an 80% solid point about pictures and the press (which really only tangentially has anything to do you with the wrinkled Gray Lady), you could have kept me on as a paying subscriber and hell, I might have even conned my company into subscribing to your paper for me. Seriously, it just opens a whole can of beautiful worms regarding the priorities of your paper's management.
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