The 20th century is considered by many to be the bloodiest in history. With two world

wars and countless foreign conflicts, photography and the news media were the main ways the

American public made sense of these great losses and violence. But as the technologies of war

progressed so too did the media. The public’s ability and proclivity to make sense of past and

present wars through photojournalism has changed over time due to the emergence of new

technologies in photographic reproduction and dissemination. In order to conduct a survey of

how photographs have been used to shape public understanding of wars, I will analyze their use

in relation to World Wars I and II, The Vietnam War and the War on Terror in both Afghanistan

and Iraq. I will show that the public’s media literacy, opinions regarding the objectivity of

photography and the photojournalist’s involvement in the war—either imbedded, not imbedded

or surveyor of the aftermath—affects the public’s perception of a given war—both as it happens

and in the public memory

Many war photojournalism scholars (Campbell, 2003; Griffin, 2010; Perlmutter, 2005)

have studied the mainstream assumption that particularly violent or shocking war photographs

have the ability to turn policies on their head, change public opinions of the war and, ultimately,

stop a military operation in its tracks—the Vietnam War stands out in most people’s mind. Each

concludes that this idea is far too complex for an absolute answer. Too many other factors need

to be taken into account before the true impact of a photograph can be confirmed. But all reach

an agreement about photojournalism’s role in showing the public theatres of conflict; their

impact varies greatly depending on government censorship, objectivity and framing. This notion

that each war and body of photographs carries with it its own specific set of parameters that need

to be taken into account is essential when trying to pinpoint the extent to which photojournalism

shapes public opinion during conflict.

“Notions of objectivity and balance, a reliance on official sources and press releases, access to

theatre of actions, collaborations with subjects and beliefs in photo-realism and documentary

recording are all issues that are tested by the results of wartime reporting and image-making”

(Griffin, 2010, p.7).

In order to understand the reception and impact of war images, it is first necessary to

understand the “conditions under which the image is produced and the institutional practices by

which the image is distributed” (Griffin, p. 8). These conditions have changed drastically over

time with the development of media and military technology.

Photography, since its inception, has been a major documenter of war for government

reconnaissance and public consumption. Few would contest the public’s desire to be updated on

the military operations of their country in order to make sense of what was going on. With the

scale and complexity of wars, photography, documentaries and war reporting are ways the public

makes sense of the breadth of violence and destruction during these conflicts. Iconic photographs

like the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima, Accidental Napalm Attack and the 9/11 Attacks have become

part of the American national consciousness, a way for them to gaze back at a moment in history

that exemplifies the meaning of an otherwise chaotic conflict; “Great, long drawn-out events are

now recalled in collective memory by a few images, facts and phrases” (Perlmutter, 2005, p.

119).

Photography’s ability to “telescope” history (Perlmutter, p. 119) is related directly to

Susan Sontag’s assertion that photographic images provide most of the knowledge people have

about the past (1977, p. 209). She goes on to assert that in addition to photographs “package[ing]

the world,” they seem to “invite packaging” through cropping, censorship and framing. This is

precisely what Campbell, Griffin and Perlmutter warn must be taken into account when

assuming the absolute power of an image of war. I would also add—in regard to the War on

Terror—the 24-hour news cycle to the list of elements that problematize the war photograph’s

credibility as absolute representation of a conflict.

We begin, however, with one of the bloodiest wars in history; World War I.

1] World War I – Stereography and the Keystone series

In their study entitled “Creating a Photographic Record of World War I” (2011), Andrew

Mendelson and Carolyn Kitch studied the impact of stereographs after the end of the Great War

and, specifically, the 1923 Keystone set of 300 cards. They assert that “World War I was

explained and memorialized in American stereography after its conclusion” (p. 142). This is an

interesting contrast to the way by which wars have been memorialized since. Media technologies

of production, reproduction and dissemination allowed photographers in subsequent wars to

report from the middle of conflict zones instead of publishing them after the fact.

Stereographs are small photographic cards that are placed in a stereoscope—a private

viewing device with individual eye holes—and allow the viewer to experience a greater feeling

of depth and emersion into the scene than a two-dimensional photograph. On the backs of each

of the 300 cards was a text description that set the tone of the piece, praised Allied efforts,

condemned German techniques or gave context to the image (Mendelson & Kitch, p. 143). The

viewing experience encouraged a thoughtful, prolonged survey of each scene—a viewing

experience that is arguably absent from mainstream media today.

The significance of stereographic sets such as the Keystone 300 in creating a national

memory is particularly telling when considering the media censorship that was placed on

photographers during the war

itself. The US Army Signal

Corps censored most images

showing American casualties.

Additionally, “all combatants

were concerned about

detrimental stories or pictures

getting out, and thus, access to

troops [for civilian journalists] and the front was severely curtailed” (p. 144). Mendelson and

Kitch conclude that many of the most disastrous battles were never reported until after the war

and it was not until this time that a more accurate sense of the scale of destruction and casualties

was made public (p. 144).

When these photographs were made public they predominantly showed times of stillness

between battles. “Due to the limitations of access as well as technology, few shots revealed

soldiers in combat (p.146). Figure 1 depicts a dead German soldier lying in a trench. They

attempted to show the extent of the carnage that was caused by the European conflict and to

show people at home the scale of the destruction. However, the authors conclude that “the

stereograph did not adequately document the numbers of deaths of soldiers (p. 146). They did,

however, provide a substantial catalogue of photographs that would allow the general public to

glimpse into this theatre of conflict and to slowly begin to make sense of what had occurred—it

is, according to Kendelson & Kitch an example of “retrospective media” that allowed for a

national memory of the war.

Retrospective media, explain Mendelson & Kitch contain two types of memory:

“”evidence” of the past, often in the form of documentary materials, such as photographs, and

new statements about what “we” realize that past meant, a voice that suggests the audience has a

shared, social understanding of the past” (p. 143). What is interesting about this notion of

retrospective media and a collective understanding of a past event is that it places absolute

authority onto the photographs and thus photographers that are depicting this past. I would argue

that the ability of such collections to create a “national memory,” as Kitch & Mendelson say they

do, is reliant on two factors: a) the nation’s willingness to trust that what they are seeing is

accurate and b) a lack of other evidence of the event. The limitations of photographic technology

during World War I and the inability for journalists to get to the front lines of conflict

problematize the notion that the Keystone 300 are a wholly accurate representation of the war,

particularly because they show only the aftermath and because they are arranged in a book

format.

This idea relates back to the problems of objectivity and balance, reliance on official

sources and access to theatres of action that Michael Griffin addresses as well as Susan Sontag’s

notion of photographs “packaging” the world. Due to a lack of alternative media depicting the

war for American citizens to consume, images such as the Keystone 300 became the absolute

national memory of the war. But their framing was largely dictated by a number of limitations

and restrictions in regard to technology and government censorship. Furthermore, the images

were arranged using a narrative technique that, again, frames and reduces the “true” picture of

the war to a set of closely framed and selected photographs. I would argue that this was made

possible by a lack of alternative resources and thus relative media illiteracy compared to now and

by the need to understand the conflict but the inability for the media to adequately do so.

World War II is a war that has been stuck in the global consciousness since its end –

photographs, films, books and poems have saturated a collective psyche with myth, controversy,

conspiracy and stories of good prevailing over evil. From a media perspective, World War II

stands as perhaps the greatest war for propaganda and closely framed photographs—some of

which became the most identifiable war icons in history.

2) World War II – Icons and War Propaganda

“By the break of the Second World War, it was taken for granted that events of the war

could be photographically recorded” (Griffin, p. 11). This war saw the United States, Britain,

Germany and Russia all use front line photography and motion picture to blur the lines between

documentary and staged scenes for the purposes of national morale. Each of these countries

understood the great potential of the media to rally a nation behind their cause. This is the reason

so many iconic photographs (The Flag Raising at Iwo Jima, Hiroshima, photos of Hitler and the

Nazi party, etc.) and propaganda films (The Triumph of the Will) were so prevalent during the

war. A strong sense of national pride and resilience was developed through the use of

photography.

But this raises serious questions about the reality-value of the photograph during World

War II. The Americans, according to Griffin, “so effectively managed a nuanced combination of

propagandistic journalism and fiction reconstruction, using an often seamless stream of pictures

in both the news and entertainment media to present idealized representations of heroic

determination and military success to the American public” (p. 12).

Once again, like with the Keystone 300 images, the validity of the photographic

documentation of World War II comes into question. But this is further problematized by the

sheer volume of photographs and film historians have from the war. The number of

photographers on the ground during the war has saturated the international consciousness with a

collection of photographs that attempts to make sense of, again, the scale of the conflict, but

which likely contains countless false or staged images.

This skepticism is, of course,

coming from a modern perspective

of heightened media literacy which

is exactly the point of this essay.

The idea touted by many that

photographs have the ability to

shape national memory and public

opinion is problematized when one

considers the fact that government

policy and mainstream media

institution can and do frame events

in a certain way as to promote a certain response.

The ability of the mainstream media and governments to manipulate the framing of

World War II was exemplified through the conscious creation of iconic images, most notably

“Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” (figure 2).

This photograph is considered the most iconic photograph of World War II, winning the

Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year it was taken by Joe Rosenthal and being

personally chosen by President Roosevelt to be the symbol for the seventh war bond drive

Figure 2 – Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

(Hariman and Lucaites, 2007). The photograph was published within seventeen and a half hours

of being taken and was subsequently splashed all over the mainstream media, instantly becoming

an icon of the war. It’s not hard to see why this photograph would garner such propagandistic

interest from the government and Associated Press – it epitomizes the image of American

victory, hard work and unity. It is considered one of the most iconic and most reproduced images

of all time (Hariman and Lucaites).

What is interesting about this photograph from the perspective of this essay is the speed

by which the photograph became an icon. The technology required for Rosenthal to take this

photograph in the first place and then to wire it to editors in Guam who then relayed it back to

the United States which resulted in the explosion of the photograph across the country is a very

telling example of how technology and framing affect the way war photographs can influence the

public’s understanding of the war. Michael Griffin, in analyzing Hariman and Lucaites’ book

“No Caption Needed” states that the two authors argue that “the making of an icon ‘can take

time’ and that its formation has more to do with tapping into ‘climates of feeling’ than with the

representation of historical evidence” (p. 17). Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima bypassed this wait

period because, I would argue, the media and government identified it as a photograph that

would tap into the public’s “climate of feeling” and thus shed positive light on the nation’s war

effort.

The impact of this photograph does not stem from its status as a “true” window into the

war that altered the course of the nation’s war effort but was rather created and enforced by the

media and government of the time. The image was used to tap into the feelings of nationalism

that were created through propaganda and was produced and disseminated by harnessing the

media technologies of the day. I would argue that there is nothing inherent to the photograph that

elicits the kind of mass response it received but rather the response it received was dependent on

technologies of mass dissemination and the government pushing it the forefront of the visual

wartime media.

This notion of photojournalism as being reliant on government and mainstream media

restriction is particularly relevant when considering its mythical status during the Vietnam War.

The assertion that photojournalists and iconic Vietnam photos effectively turned to tides of the

war and shifted public opinion against the war is a frequently quoted assumption, particularly

amongst veterans of the anti-war movement. Once again, the actual impact of these photographs

is not so black and white.

The Vietnam War, Hippies and the “Golden Age” of Photojournalism

The canon of Vietnam War photographs has been mythologized as being the most open,

and “true” documentations of a war since the dawn of photographic technology. This is largely

attributed to the freedom that photojournalists had to move about Vietnam during the conflict

and the opening up of the mainstream press to images of extreme violence and military

oppression. Photographs such as the Saigon execution, self-immolation monk and Accidental

Napalm Attack have all been touted as seminal photos that changed the course of the war. But, as

numerous studies about photojournalism during the Vietnam have pointed out, this was not really

the case. There seems to be many more factors besides just these photographs that scholars

attribute to the decline in public support towards the final years of the war.

The Vietnam War is often labelled as the first war to be shown to the American people on

television directly in their living rooms. This new technology of news dissemination, in theory,

allowed for photojournalists to transmit what they were seeing directly to the American people in

order to let them decide how to make sense of the war. The volume of freely roaming

photojournalists in Vietnam during the occupation as well as the camera technology available to

them meant that the quality and volume of images collected was unparalleled by any war before

it (Perlmutter, p. 113). The state-of-the-art Nikon F SLR camera was the tool of choice for many

photojournalists in Vietnam. It

was a light-weight, coloured

camera that allowed them to

always be on the front line of

combat and get the clear picture

—a far cry from the stereograph

technology used during World

War I. The combination of this

camera technology and the

technologies of disseminating these photos placed great value on the “truth” of the Vietnam

photographs, meaning that many have considered them to be absolute representations of the war

itself.

I would like to argue that the new technology of media production and dissemination

used during the Vietnam War did not live up to the public’s perception of its democratizing

ability. Rather, the sheer volume of photographs that inundated the American public with

imagery of the war only gave the illusion of transparency when there was still a closely regulated

government and media process dictating what was and what was not shown to the public. I

consider the Vietnam War to be a period when technology gave the illusion of transparency

because of the regulated dissemination platform and freedom of press movement in the conflict

theatre but one that failed to live up to the myth.

In order to do this I turn my attention to Guy Westwell’s critique of the myth surrounding

Nick Ut’s photograph “Accidental Napalm Attack” depicting Kim Phuc following a South

Vietnamese napalm attack on Trang Bang (figure 3). Westwell is particularly interested in how

the gatekeeping process at the Associated Press, NBC and The New York Times altered the

appearance of this photograph to fit with their own view of how it should be presented. “Any

understanding of the inception of Accidental Napalm Attack must be grounded in the work of

these news agencies as they selected and deselected images in response to the demands of a

competitive news market” (2011, p. 408).

Westwell then goes on to outline what happened to Ut’s photograph after he delivered it

to the Associated Press office in Saigon. “This negative was different from the one that is now an

iconic image of the war,” says Westwell (p. 409). This original print, he goes on to explain, was

composed in the following way: “in the immediate left foreground there is a girl with arms

outstretched; to the right, two more clothed children running hand in hand; behind the children

and to the right are six soldiers, also running, and a photographer manipulating his camera” (p.

409). The original photo was also in color, not black and white. Westwell explains that before

being sent off to major news institutions around the United States, alteration such as removing

shadow from the girl’s groin that looked like pubic hair [it was against policy to show full frontal

nudity of an adult] and obscured portions of the photograph that depicted injuries in too much

detail. The photograph was essentially screened and slightly altered to meet mainstream

regulations back home.

The implication of this manipulation, says Westwell (emphasis in original) is “the

gatekeeping decisions and technical manipulation of the photograph, in effect, determine the

photograph’s central subject in advance as the story of a young innocent girl burnt by napalm”

(p. 410). The myth that this picture tore into the mainstream media as a true, unbiased window

into the atrocities happening in Vietnam and shocked the public to the very core because it blew

the lid open on what was transpiring does not appear to be the case here. Not only was this

photograph specifically chosen by the Associated Press as a photo to be wired around the United

States it was also doctored

and prepped as a narrative

about the little girl. This is

not of course to take away

from what is being shown

in the image. The point is

rather that technologies of

production and

dissemination can and do

manipulate what photos

make it to the mainstream media and how they are shown once they’re there; this is a far cry

from the absolute transparency myth associated with the Vietnam War.

The second myth of Vietnam War photography is that they contained within them

incredible power to shift public opinion and influence government policy. I will touch on this

briefly, citing David Perlmutter’s article called “Photojournalism and Foreign Affairs”.

Perlmutter discusses the Saigon execution photograph taken during the Vietcong Tet offensive in

Figure 4 – Saigon Execution (1968)

1968 (figure 4). “Hundreds of politicians, reporters, editors and scholars have asserted at the time

and through today, that “this was the picture that lost the war” […]” (p. 115).

But Perlmutter goes on to problematize this assertion, stating that “almost all American

distaste for the war was due to losses in American lives and the interminable length of conflict”

(p. 116). Both him and Michael Sherer in a study entitled “Vietnam War Photos and Public

Opinion” hold that the American public’s distaste for the war resulted from a gradual shift

toward the tail end of the conflict that resulted from growing weariness with the length of the

conflict, anger over the American lives lost and a loss of faith in the country’s leadership. The

findings in Sherer’s report state that rather than mainstream media images being a catalyst for

changing public opinion [as a whole, not taking into account the counterculture that was against

the war far prior to 1968], the media reflected the public’s negative sentiment through an

increase of negative photographs depicting death and violence (Sherer, 1989, pp. 394, 530) .

In regard to the distrust of leadership as being one of the factors in shifting public opinion

about the war, Perlmutter states that “when there is a crisis in foreign policy, political scientists

have long noted a rallying boost in public opinion for the commander in chief” (p. 116). But, he

goes on to say, “that surge only lasts in the commander leads”. The Tet offensive came at a time

when President Johnson was depressed, facing criticism from his own administration and largely

out of the public eye. Perlmutter concludes that “the Saigon execution picture, thus, changed few

minds; failure of leadership was the more powerful foreign affairs catalyst” (p. 116).

I would argue that the reason for Vietnam War photography having the myth that it does

is related to the physical and technological freedom that journalists were granted during the

conflict. The ability for photojournalists to take color photographs from the thick of the war and

to transmit them back home created the illusion of absolute transparency that went along with the

countercultural ideal of breaking down the shackles of authority. But this was not really the case

when one considers that all of these photographs were closely filtered through the mainstream

media. Technology, during this war, acted as an illusory vessel for transparency but one that

ultimately failed to live up to its own myth.

Regardless of whether or not this myth is true, Michael Griffin acknowledges the

government’s reluctance to allow such a free moving press to operate in future military

operations. “Since the 1970s, successive US government and US military command have

conscientiously worked to avoid a repeat of the kind of media access and exposure they feel was

detrimental in Vietnam” (2010, p. 24). This seems to have been the United States’ approach to

the War on Terror.

The War on Terror – From Bush to Obama

The media’s role in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq has its roots in the techniques

taken by the United States during the invasion of Panama in 1989. The government effectively

shut down and closely monitored what coverage escaped from the operations in Panama and

made it into the mainstream media. This allowed them effectively to control how they conducted

the operation without domestic pressures caused by media coverage (Griffin, 2010). “The lesson

for the future government policy was that tightly restricting press access was a successful

strategy for maintaining government influence over media coverage,” says Griffith (p. 25). This

same technique was used in Grenada and during Desert Storm.

Griffin likens the coverage of the Iraq invasion of 2003 with the Desert Storm operation

saying that in each case “the US government, particularly political interest, defense industries

and commercial media organizations were able to cooperatively produce a kind of “Gulf War

Movie” that was free of contradictory images and explicitly promoted American hegemony, the

superiority of Western technology and a controlled sense of global dominance” (p. 30).

The technology that was available during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of course far

exceeded what was available during any other war in history. In addition to the production

technologies being far superior with digital capabilities, the internet has created a platform of

horizontal information dissemination that can transmit real time images around the world in a

matter of seconds. But yet the mainstream media in the United States still broadcasted what

Griffin identifies as the three leading photographic genres: “the arsenal, troops, political leaders”

(p. 31).

A possible reason for this is the fact that reporters with mainstream organizations were

embedded by the Coalition Media Centre with military units so that “those from the front line

[would] provide images and stories from an unavoidably narrow perspective” (Campbell, p. 63).

In addition to this, the United States established the CMC headquarters to ensure the control of

media personnel inside Iraq. While the embedded journalists were given their narrow perspective

in the field, “the journalists at CMC were given what was said to be the broad overview but in

effect only amplified the narrow perspective amplified by the Pentagon and its partners”

(Campbell, p. 63).

This micro management of the in-country press during the Iraq War is very interesting in

the context of this essay. Throughout the war, the media was privileged to the most advanced

technology in history to report on what was “really” going on in Iraq. But the governmental

policies and management by the US effectively censored what the press was reporting on but

made it look like the war was all access. The television environment in the United States right

now is unlike anything we have seen before; with 24-hour news cycles and technology that

would put NORAD to shame, the American public was still effectively sold the same doctored

footage from a war zone but with the ever heightened illusion that it was providing absolute

transparency. David Campbell says that this “meant the military could be confident journalists

would producer maximum content with minimum insight” (p. 63).

Campbell does, however, address the presence of independent photographers and

cameramen who worked in the Iraq and Afghanistan warzones and acknowledges that they were

producing footage that greatly stepped outside the “three genre” approach to reporting the war in

favor of the real thing. But, he says, “the problem is that the media industry itself operates in

terms of codes and norms that mesh with the military’s restrictions and prevent the release of

such images by invoking conceptions of taste and decency” (p.64).

But these photographs were inevitably being leaked onto the internet at to independent

news stations. Unlike in previous wars when it could takes years for these photographs to be

released for public critique, internet technology allowed for a more open coverage of the war,

just not in the mainstream media itself. What is interesting about this is that this independent

coverage of the war, outside of the mainstream media, has meant that dialogue about the failings

of the major news organization’s coverage of the War on Terror has been allowed to flourish.

This is indicative of the new digital and internet age that we live in – despite measures taken by

the government to suppress the coverage of war in the mainstream media, there are simply too

many platforms now for images that transgress this regulation to come to the fore.

This theme of technology and the United States usage of it in wartime operations as well

as the media coverage of it also comes up in one of the newest iconic photographs—the Situation

Room photograph during the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 (figure 5).

Liam Kennedy, in his

article entitled “Seeing is

Believing: On Photography

and the War on Terror”

describes the photograph

as a depiction of “the state

[…] witnessing the

execution of its own

violent power. This form

of state violence is enacted as shock and awe, as high technological intervention in foreign

terrains” (2012, p. 266). The notion of looking at a photograph of a room full of people watching

an act of war on a second screen is, perhaps, the epitome of our media technology. Not only is

the United States military able to surgically carry out missions from across the world using

technology, we are also able to see what they look like as they do it. For us, it’s a kind of double

displacement from the act itself; because we have never actually seen the body of Osama Bin

Laden, we are given this iconic photograph in its stead as “proof” that it did indeed happen.

The digital age has also brought into fruition further skepticism about photographs that, I

have argued in this essay, was not around when the stereographs of World War I were released.

Increased media literacy in today’s society has meant that many people are skeptical about what

they see. Whether or not this new digital age means future wars will be covered and watched

Figure 5 – The Situation Room; The killing of Bin Laden (2011)

differently is of course yet to be seen. But digital technology and internet platforms that can

bypass the mainstream media have already created an interesting relationship between traditional

and independent war coverage.

David Campbell states that “the digital age has, however, had an important impact on

contemporary debates about photography. With the increased capacity for pictorial manipulation

arising from the use of digital cameras and computer imaging, public laments about the

associated loss of authority are truth and common” (p. 65).

This is indeed true—the ease by which anyone can manipulate photographs poses a

serious problem for ensuring accurate war photography. But, as I have attempted to show in this

essay, there is not necessarily such thing as an absolute, transparent representation of a war.

There are far too many factors that influence the cannon of photographs from a given war, not

the least of which is government suppression and mainstream media’s framing and regulation

But it does seem possible that horizontal dissemination of photographs as opposed to the

traditional top-down approach may see greater accuracy and breadth of photographic content

from wars. What is clear, however, is that media technology has played an integral role in how

wars have been covered since the dawn of photography. The technology used in covering a war

affects the type of coverage it receives and, thus, that shapes how the public will view the war

both during the conflict and after its conclusion.

Works Cited

Campbell, David. "Cultural Governance and Pictorial Resistance: Reflection on the Imaging of

War." Review of International Studies 29 (2003): 57-73.

Griffin, Michael. "Media Images of War." Media, War & Conflict 3.1 (2010): 7-41.

Hariman, Robert, and John Louis. Lucaites. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and

Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007.

Kennedy, Liam. "Seeing Is Believing: On Photography and the War on Terror." Public Culture 24.2 (2012):

261-81.

Mendelson, Andrew L. "Creating a Photographic Record of World War I." Journalism History 37.3 (2011):

142-50.

Perlmutter, David D. "Photojournalism and Foreign Affairs." Orbis 49.1 (2005): 109-22.

Sherer, Michael D. "Vietnam War Photos and Public Opinion." Journalism Quarterly 66.2 (1989): 391-95.

Sontag, Susan. "In Plato's Cave." On Photography 3.24 (1989): 3-24.

Westwell, Guy. "Accidental Napalm Attack and Hegemonic Visions of America's War in Vietnam." Critical

Studies in Media Communication 28.5 (2011): 407-23.