When the Marine Corps Misses the Bigger Picture

From Lily over at Healing Combat Trauma

When the Marine Corps Misses the Bigger Picture -- Zoriah, Eric Acevedo, and Censorship
It's discouraging to even have to post about this, but there it is.
In a fight between the Marine Corps and freedom of the press, the Marine Corps seems like it wants the win. According to Google Playfights (see gimmicky graphic illustrating this post) it already has. (Learn more about Google Playfights elsewhere: it's not central to this post.)
Following the recently embedded independent photojournalist Zoriah's travails recently, on his blog, it seems he's being kicked out of Iraq, and risking being completely blacklisted, because of at least some higher up Marine Corps officers displeasure with images he posted. Images that centrally could help America to really get a better grip on the true cost of war for its participants. If you believe the experts (and the poets), no one comes back from war, unchanged. Whether it's what you've done/seen/participated in or not been able to do/see/participate in, it exacts a tremendous psychic cost. That doesn't mean we should stop fighting in them - just that we should be more aware of the actual costs. For every combatant killed, so many more are injured, and will come home with injuries that in many cases will profoundly transform their lives, and that of their families, for decades to come. It's a shame the Marine Corps doesn't really want to let us, Americans, wrap our brains around this concept more fully. It would help make us better empathizers with the true cost of war to its participants.
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also

July 03, 2008
Find the Cost of Freedom, Buried in the Ground
It's an old Crosby, Stills and Nash song, by Steven Stills. Many of us who were there in the 70s still remember the words. I know I can recite them from memory: "Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground. Mother Earth will swallow you; lay your burdens down."

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Not only my favorite holiday the whole year through -- sorry, I'm a New Englander, we're just born that way -- but also another opportunity - along with Memorial Day, and Veterans Day - to stop and honor the service of those who sacrificed their lives for freedom, or at least, responded to what they saw as the call of duty that they responded to, while others did not. Those whose blood was shed on American soil -- in Lexington, Massachusetts, in the Revolutionary War -- and also, more recently, in the jungles of Vietnam, in the mountains of Afghanistan and in the sands and urban jungles of Iraq.

I'm thinking today about censorship -- and the power of an image to convey, in a single instance, what those of us who labor over our words perhaps never can. The picture, they claim, is worth 1,000 words -- perhaps because it communicates, in an instant, across barriers of language, space and time -- what human beings instinctively understand, nonverbally. With war: that there is a price; that it is never really glorious; that those who give their lives often do so -- as the poet W.H. Auden wrote about the famous art masterpiece, the "Fall of Icarus," by the Dutch painter, Brueghel -- in a depressingly inglorious context:


"About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along...

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http://www.healingcombattrauma.com/

About Zoriah

Zoriah (born January 27, 1976) is an award winning photojournalist whose work has been seen in some of the world’s most prestigious publications, museums and galleries. Initially trained in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Aid to Developing Countries, he worked for international aid organizations such as the Red Cross[citation needed] before returning to photography after a long absence. It was his extensive knowledge and training in survival and international aid which made him originally marketable to international photo agencies including World Picture News (WPN), Reporters Agency, The Image Works and EyePress Photo Agency in China.

His work first won critical acclaim in the early 1990's when his photo series on homeless life in America was selected to tour the country in the Songs of The People project [1]. He was also named Photojournalist of The Year in 2006 by Morepraxis as well as winning the VII Photo Agency Portfolio Contest. He was among the photographers in World Picture News Networks Most Powerful Imagery of 2006.

As an adult, his images of conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, The Gaza Strip and Lebanon have been widely published and have traveled to many countries around the world in museums and fine art galleries. His style of dark and moody imagery has become a trademark and he often releases feature stories containing graphic imagery of war, disease, social issues and strife which are considered both powerful and compassionate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoriah