A War photographer has the most demanding profession. A job that he has to perform in spite of himself. A profession where subjectivity, emotion and revulsion have to be side-lined. He does not have the time to even contemplate on his action, ruminate over the ethics of of photographing. It is a job in which the earliest bird gets the worm.

The first stanza illustrates how the dark room offers the photographer the space to analyze his photographs objectively as well as subjectively. The different pictures spool out into an ordered sequence as though reechoing their silence, and their heart rending agonies. The setting of the gruesome sequences are relived. Their logical categorization is juxtaposed against the abruptness of the corresponding situation, and the illogicality of the reason for the war. The room is gloomy and filled with an eerie red light at once symbolic of spilled blood. The red glow at once reminds us of The Sanctuary Lamp that is symbolic of Gods eternal presence, and is therefore never extinguished. The photographer and his actions within the dark room are likened to a priest and his preparations to intone a mass. This seems like a deliberate attempt on part of the poet to juxtapose the sanctity of the latter, against the unholiness and worldliness of the former.

The speaker speaks of ‘Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh’ to demarcate them from Rural England where England is far from the ravages of war and its devastating effects. ”All fresh is grass”, claims the poet. All flesh has eventually only vegetative value, and is trampled upon. The poem may be inspired by the poetess’ friendship with two war photographers, Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths.The speaker of the poem then goes on to justify his stand, he has a job to do that has to be inevitably performed.

Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands which did not tremble then
though seem to now.

The solution at once emblematizes blood, as the poet trembles at their sight now, as they give him room for deliberation. Rural England is Home to her. It is indifferent to all these problems. It is home because it stands for ordinary pain, something that can be remedied by the simple weather. There is no uncertainty of the fields exploding beneath your feet here. And children live a normal life rather than living in nightmares and the persistent fear of the unknown.

All of a sudden, an image relives itself. It is the face of a man who died in the war. As the photo appears it seems like a half-formed ghost owing to its ghostliness, and ghastliness. The last convulsions on the man’s face seem to break out yet again as the face gets contorted before him .The cries of the man’s wife reverberate in his ears as he made himself immune to the situation and shot those pictures. He did not even heed to take the permission of the dead person’s wife. The blood now seemed to stink into his foreign soil leaving an indelible stain on his mind.

These dreadful sequences are now reduced to black and white pictures. Further, they have now been marginalized to a hundred choices for the editor, out of which he will pick only five or six, yet again relegating their significance. The emotions intricately associated with them are divorced from them.

© Rukhaya MK 2010

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