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A photograph with a message – and without a hope You may have already seen the color photograph that won the prestigious World Press Photo contest this year. And if you haven't, just look at it now: A dark and haunting image of a U.S. soldier 'fresh' from a fierce fire-fight, captured by camera in a grimy bunker in an eastern province of Afghanistan, Sept. 16, 2007. The man reclines in exhaustion, holding one hand to his head in a gesture reminiscent of disbelief. His other hand clutches his helmet. His face is half in shadow, the visible cheek flushed with color. According to WPP juror Mary Anne Golon, "There's a human quality to this picture. It says that conflict is the basis of this man's life." Horrors and trials: The photograph clearly alludes to the horrors and the trials of war. But what does this award mean? What lies behind the allocation of the WPP first prize to this image? And what does the image communicate and fail to communicate?British photographer Tim Hetherington's first prize, awarded against over 5,000 other photographers, is an outstanding achievement. The WPP award is one of the most prestigious amongst photojournalists. It comes with a Euro 10,000 prize and broad public exposure. Not only did Hetherington's photograph rise above more than 80,000 other images entered in the competition, also winning second prize in the General News Stories category; the win means promotion far beyond the image's original audience through last month's Vanity Fair. Mass media attention following announcement of the prize has amplified the image around the world. This already sublime distribution will be echoed further still with a touring exhibition to more than 100 locations around the world, from Berlin to Brisbane, Tirana to Tokyo, Harare to Quito, and from Athens to Zurich. These exhibition sites will doubtless all feel a long way from the dangerous and strategic Korengal Valley where Hetherington, 'embedded' with US military personnel for five months, took the winning shot. The valley was the scene of the downing of a U.S. military helicopter in July 2005 that caused the deaths of all 16 troops on board. The bunker in which the photographed but unidentified man is taking cover was named 'Restrepo' after a soldier from his platoon killed by insurgent fighters.According to photographer Gary Knight, in a statement made as the chair of the WPP panel of judges, the image communicated not only the 'weariness of a man' but also the 'weariness of a nation.' With Knight's comment, one soldier has been made to symbolize the condition of an entire people in response to a war. More subtly, the soldier's exhaustion and his connection to the U.S. at large allude to the problematic situation of U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan. The image directly corresponds to, and perhaps even supports, U.S. criticism of other NATO allies' failures to commit to war against the resurgent Taleban and Al-qaeda fighters.For many months the troop numbers and deployments of NATO member states to the military mission in Afghanistan have been criticized as lacking. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted that NATO's role in the war torn country has gone from one of peacekeeping to battling a full-blown counter-insurgency. Warnings that the fight against Islamist insurgents could fail have been growing. Yet the 26 NATO allies are said to be bitterly divided over their responsibilities toward the fight. Earlier this week, the U.S. defence secretary, Robert Gates, for the first time appealed directly and openly to Europeans to give better support to the war. He warned that violence and terrorism would increase if the North Atlantic military alliance was defeated there. Gates' public address marked an intensified approach on the part of the United States to garner larger and more risk-taking contibutions from NATO member states.Yet in many European states, in particular Germany, there is severe doubt that military success is now possible against the Islamist armies in Afghanistan, through NATO or otherwise. Following the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the duration of the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has not only witnessed the growth of areas controlled by Islamist forces, but also the rise of cash-crop opium production, increased violence against girls and women at personal, militarized and societal levels, and greater numbers of Afghan civilian deaths than numbers of persons killed in the 9/11 attacks on U.S. territory.So is the image of the exhausted U.S. fighter propagandistic? Certainly it is much more disturbing for what it does not portray, than for what it does especially given its award-winning status. What does it serve?: The image clearly invites us to imagine the emotions and physical sensations of one man ? what he has seen and felt in battle. Reducing the phenomenon of war to the human level can be done constructively. But no people of Afghanistan are depicted in this image. There are no torn or punctured, cut or exploded bodies, no signs of urban or cultural destruction. More problematically, there is no sign of hope. In so far as the metaphoric messages of Hetherington's photograph and their promotion through the WPP contest are in harmony with the U.S. administration's actions to increase military force in Afghanistan, it is serving a harmful and destructive purpose.Susan Sontag said photographs: "La[y] down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered… Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what people recall of events." The iconic status of Hetherington's exhausted soldier seems assured following the WPP contest. So let's decide its meaning for ourselves rather than reading the words of the WPP judges alone and think hard about what the picture of the exhausted fighter fails to show, far beyond what it does. Miriellie Thornton
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