ABSTRACT
Although the essay covers familar ground, and concentrates on photo-reportage at the expense of perhaps more intriguing photographic representations by ingenious photographers, by the soldiers themselves, by miltary documentarists it nevertheless provides an interesting starting point for further discussion of the iconography of war. The modern persona and territory of the war photographer begin with Robert Capa. Coverage with the small camera in Die Berliner Illustrierte, Die Munchen Illustrierte and their later French, English, and middle-European progeny reified the notion of photographer-as-activist: individual photographs and photo essays were constructed to emphasize the people-are-there quality of the committed participant, the man-in-the-midst-of-history. In most cases, Jury’s photographs are printed two or more to a page; where they are not, a text block often supplies the juxtaposition necessary to create the author’s intended irony. To understand the role photography played in shaping the people perceptions of the war, they need to examine all of the ways photographs were used in institutions and publications.
