Kainaz Amaria visited the War/Photography exhibit on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and came away moved by its unsettling implications:
]]>“War/Photography” connects more than 185 photographs from 25 nationalities with conflicts spanning 165 years. “It’s organized in the order of war,” says [Anne] Tucker, whose team took 10 years to cull images from more than 1 million photographs — after visiting private collections, museums, military archives and photographic agencies in more than 17 countries.
Walking through the galleries, you experience the images by themes and aspects of war — like recruitment, the wait, the fight, the rescue, aftermath, medicine, civilians, children, faith and homecoming.
On one wall titled “Aftermath: Shell Shock and Exhaustion,” Don McCullin’s image of a shell-shocked soldier made in 1968 hangs six frames away from Luis Sinco’s 2004 image titled “Marlboro Marine.” Taken nearly four decades apart, the men share a strikingly similar gaze, suggesting the horrors witnessed during conflict. Individually the images made an impact during their respective publications, but seen together they nod to a greater reality.