I I will show some pictures that were
published a lot so they look like this
their dramatic images I worked for
mainly for the New York Times as a
freelance photographer in Iraq and in
Afghanistan for about ten years
and among many others I took these
images and I’m very happy with them
they’ve very dynamic and dramatic and I
took them and I’m proud of them but they
are also in a way predictable if you
look at images that are published a lot
about war you will always find similar
patterns they’re all some sort of
technically saying involve like tanks
there are soldiers with uniform their
weapons so a lot of times these
publications show us war in a way that
we expect it to look like which is not
wrong but it’s and that is my argument
it isn’t predictable it’s something that
we feel we already know
so I took this image in Iraq but it’s
basically my Vietnam moment we all know
this image already and we’ve seen it
many many times and I just repeat it and
then it’s printed and we like ha
oh yeah that’s war so I was very angry
and being German being being angry comes
almost naturally so I am I guess so I
was told I should never ever ever
whatever happens I should not leave this
little carpet I try okay I try so I I
just did I think I did you do get little
electric shocks if you if you leave this
carpet they sent me a twenty page
document with the rules you know guys I
never read it sorry I’m so I was angry
because a lot of the images that I took
in Iraq and Afghanistan were never
published and amongst those were
pictures that were too horrific to
publish they were too terrible for the
publications the the publication did not
dare to show them to you as the viewer
so I was there made me angry it made me
feel like I didn’t do my job properly
because my job is not just to take the
images my job is to ensure that the
image is also published so I started
this little experiment and the
experiment looks like this became a very
small tiny book with pictures there are
not my best pictures they’re not my most
dramatic pictures from war they are
basically my most horrific pictures and
I went back through my archive and I
looked at all the most horrible pictures
and I put them in a little book and I
just wanted to see what what would
happen and what happened was that people
got really interested in that idea and
they they looked at this book like a lot
and a lot of people especially young
people
me not very impressed and ive never seen
images like this before which made me
really worried because I believe these
images are important to see now sorry
I’m the only one using hand mic so I
don’t know why so I did my book and and
it was a big success I was I was very
happy with it I chose the book as as the
context for this work there was no
exhibition there was no online slide
show these pictures didn’t happen on
social media it was a book that it had
to be a book it was really important
that the context of this work is a book
because in a book you have complete
control only text you have complete
control over what you want to see and
how you want to see it and how fast you
want to see it and do you want to see it
at all or do you want to see it maybe
two weeks from now or two years from now
a book is something that gives you as
the viewer complete control of how you
look at the images so it had to be book
now the trouble with the book is if I’m
invited as the crazy person to an event
like this how do you show the book
basically you can’t because you change
the context you change the context of
how you show the work and if you change
the context which worked the so
difficult is so hard to look at which is
so which can basically backfire in such
a such a terrible way where people would
just be shocked and would not be able to
wouldn’t have any chance to reflect on
what they’ve seen then there will be
disaster so I was invited last year to
quite a similar event and they said well
we’re going to show the book in a loop
it’s like an endless loop and it they
had a huge screen 6 meter screen and I
wanted to show these images 6 meters as
a loop why we had a nice conversation on
the stage and I said no please don’t do
that
it’s not fair it’s not right you cannot
bombard these people with these images
they have to decide what they want to
look at not the organizers of the event
so they said whether we figure something
out and we always do it like this so we
have to do it like this and I said oh
Jesus so it’s not it like this so this
is actually the original the original
slides that they show show then the
first picture I thought okay well I
guess it’s gonna be interesting what
would happen next and that’s what
happened next so they decided to censor
the book and first I was laughing I was
like what I mean I I mean you can’t do
that can you and then I was quite angry
and then I thought this is brilliant
because it solved my problem you can
show the book without showing the images
without forcing you to look at the
images without you know trapping you in
this situation where you you know either
close your eyes or run out of the room
or so it better you can show the book
you can explain what what the intention
was without showing the actual images so
they showed the whole book like this
sometimes it wasn’t necessary apparently
to censor and sometimes it was so they
had the assistant of the of the the
person who organized this just hold up
little pieces of paper in front of the
most terrific parts and I thought I mean
it’s brilliant because sometimes you
have to do a lot and sometimes not a
little so I thought what is the person
who did this thing is most horrific what
is words covering and was not worth
covering so I thought it’s it’s a good
way to actually show show the work which
is so much about self-censorship the
basic idea and the main idea of this
book is self-censorship and this is
exactly what this person did with my
book so it’s you know I couldn’t have
imagined it it’s too good it’s too
brilliant so um sometimes yeah it was
everything um now I have a few books we
need so later you can actually look at
the book it’s much more important to
than to see this strange slide show here
I do have an epilogue in the book which
I can show the uncensored version of
and it goes like this I have grandfather
and his name is doctor a lot of panget
so my grandfather was believing Nazi
until the day he died
and I got to know him when I was a kid
and when he was talking about war he was
telling these very positive adventure
stories about war there riding around
with their horses there was you know
there was they were very close to each
other’s soldiers but it was all very
positive like an adventure story and
only much later I realized when I went
to cover wars when I worked as a
photographer in conflict areas how much
he had actually censored himself how
much he had lied to himself and also how
much he lied to me basically telling me
these adventure stories and so I
included him as a as an epilogue in the
end of the book to show well to to have
a rather painful personal example from
my family of somebody who had really
self-censored himself but then if it’s
almost as meant as a warning if you
combine this self-censorship that we all
have in us with the state ideology like
the Nazi ideology this can be actually
very dangerous so we should be really
really careful with our self-censorship
so the book this has a design feature
which is quite unique some of the pages
in the book are closed so you have to
open them with a knife or letter opener
and you actually have to do something
you have to actively decide if you want
to open these extra pages or not so the
idea is to remind the viewer of his and
her responsibility to make that decision
what do I want to see what is important
what do I have to see okay that was the
first part now the second part thanks
for staying with me through the serious
matter there’s a second set of images
that is rarely published and I had a
folder on my on my desktop while I was
traveling in Iraq and Afghanistan which
was called weird pictures so whenever I
encountered weird pictures during my
practice which was surprisingly often I
would dump the pictures in that folder
and so after publishing the war pawn
book I felt there’s another very
important aspect of war that is
underreported that is really not
considered enough and that is absurdity
so I have I made a book full of these
strange pictures that were created in in
war zones and interestingly there was
more acceptance in the public for the
first book than the second book people
have really really irritated with the
second book because they you know you
don’t laugh about war or something and
what is something terrible we should do
everything we possibly can to avoid
armed conflict but then at the same time
more something deeply human and always
happened and we will always make war and
there will always be some sort of daily
life in war and there will be always
something to laugh about in war also and
it’s much harder to explain this than to
explain the war porn book because
whooping whoa everybody can imagine that
this is somehow horrible but that what
can be you know filled with daily life
with laughter is really hard to
understand
like he was looking for the holes he was
supposed to have created and couldn’t
find them this is one of Saddam
Hussein’s horses he had a huge horse
collection and all the horses were
killed or ran away or they were eaten or
something and so this is the one of the
very few surviving horses of Saddam
Hussein I was quite surprised to find
all these posters of paradise and beauty
in these places so this poster found in
a in a medical aid station set up by the
Iraqi army they had very little supply
that terrible wounds coming in trauma
patients it was quite horrific but had
these posters up of paradise this in
Afghanistan and I was traveling with the
German military and the German
Bundeswehr is probably the only military
in the world who goes to battle with a
foldable toilet and they have regular
paper and wet tissue paper right
this was a War Memorial in Baghdad
created by an Italian architect in the
80s for Saddam Hussein some among you
might know this plant yep marijuana all
over the place
southern Afghanistan the young soldiers
are like 19 you know foot patrol through
like fields and fields of maryam/mary
you on are endless they thought was very
cool but this this stuff is actually
produced for the local markets and the
biggest buyer of this material is the
Afghan army and they’re always good fun
so it was really the official symbol of
this unit was the rainbow they the other
soldiers from the other units thought
it’s quite funny this is in front of a
palace in Tikrit in Iraq during a
ceremony and yeah I was like it it’s
like war as a theater play so to come
back to the what I why I’m here so what
is war really like well I’m actually
quite not quite sure but I think war is
more complicated than we maybe think
what can be more funny than we think
more is definitely more horrible and
horrendous than we think and I think we
should try to do a better job to show
give you an honest picture of what war
can look like thank you
you
published a lot so they look like this
their dramatic images I worked for
mainly for the New York Times as a
freelance photographer in Iraq and in
Afghanistan for about ten years
and among many others I took these
images and I’m very happy with them
they’ve very dynamic and dramatic and I
took them and I’m proud of them but they
are also in a way predictable if you
look at images that are published a lot
about war you will always find similar
patterns they’re all some sort of
technically saying involve like tanks
there are soldiers with uniform their
weapons so a lot of times these
publications show us war in a way that
we expect it to look like which is not
wrong but it’s and that is my argument
it isn’t predictable it’s something that
we feel we already know
so I took this image in Iraq but it’s
basically my Vietnam moment we all know
this image already and we’ve seen it
many many times and I just repeat it and
then it’s printed and we like ha
oh yeah that’s war so I was very angry
and being German being being angry comes
almost naturally so I am I guess so I
was told I should never ever ever
whatever happens I should not leave this
little carpet I try okay I try so I I
just did I think I did you do get little
electric shocks if you if you leave this
carpet they sent me a twenty page
document with the rules you know guys I
never read it sorry I’m so I was angry
because a lot of the images that I took
in Iraq and Afghanistan were never
published and amongst those were
pictures that were too horrific to
publish they were too terrible for the
publications the the publication did not
dare to show them to you as the viewer
so I was there made me angry it made me
feel like I didn’t do my job properly
because my job is not just to take the
images my job is to ensure that the
image is also published so I started
this little experiment and the
experiment looks like this became a very
small tiny book with pictures there are
not my best pictures they’re not my most
dramatic pictures from war they are
basically my most horrific pictures and
I went back through my archive and I
looked at all the most horrible pictures
and I put them in a little book and I
just wanted to see what what would
happen and what happened was that people
got really interested in that idea and
they they looked at this book like a lot
and a lot of people especially young
people
me not very impressed and ive never seen
images like this before which made me
really worried because I believe these
images are important to see now sorry
I’m the only one using hand mic so I
don’t know why so I did my book and and
it was a big success I was I was very
happy with it I chose the book as as the
context for this work there was no
exhibition there was no online slide
show these pictures didn’t happen on
social media it was a book that it had
to be a book it was really important
that the context of this work is a book
because in a book you have complete
control only text you have complete
control over what you want to see and
how you want to see it and how fast you
want to see it and do you want to see it
at all or do you want to see it maybe
two weeks from now or two years from now
a book is something that gives you as
the viewer complete control of how you
look at the images so it had to be book
now the trouble with the book is if I’m
invited as the crazy person to an event
like this how do you show the book
basically you can’t because you change
the context you change the context of
how you show the work and if you change
the context which worked the so
difficult is so hard to look at which is
so which can basically backfire in such
a such a terrible way where people would
just be shocked and would not be able to
wouldn’t have any chance to reflect on
what they’ve seen then there will be
disaster so I was invited last year to
quite a similar event and they said well
we’re going to show the book in a loop
it’s like an endless loop and it they
had a huge screen 6 meter screen and I
wanted to show these images 6 meters as
a loop why we had a nice conversation on
the stage and I said no please don’t do
that
it’s not fair it’s not right you cannot
bombard these people with these images
they have to decide what they want to
look at not the organizers of the event
so they said whether we figure something
out and we always do it like this so we
have to do it like this and I said oh
Jesus so it’s not it like this so this
is actually the original the original
slides that they show show then the
first picture I thought okay well I
guess it’s gonna be interesting what
would happen next and that’s what
happened next so they decided to censor
the book and first I was laughing I was
like what I mean I I mean you can’t do
that can you and then I was quite angry
and then I thought this is brilliant
because it solved my problem you can
show the book without showing the images
without forcing you to look at the
images without you know trapping you in
this situation where you you know either
close your eyes or run out of the room
or so it better you can show the book
you can explain what what the intention
was without showing the actual images so
they showed the whole book like this
sometimes it wasn’t necessary apparently
to censor and sometimes it was so they
had the assistant of the of the the
person who organized this just hold up
little pieces of paper in front of the
most terrific parts and I thought I mean
it’s brilliant because sometimes you
have to do a lot and sometimes not a
little so I thought what is the person
who did this thing is most horrific what
is words covering and was not worth
covering so I thought it’s it’s a good
way to actually show show the work which
is so much about self-censorship the
basic idea and the main idea of this
book is self-censorship and this is
exactly what this person did with my
book so it’s you know I couldn’t have
imagined it it’s too good it’s too
brilliant so um sometimes yeah it was
everything um now I have a few books we
need so later you can actually look at
the book it’s much more important to
than to see this strange slide show here
I do have an epilogue in the book which
I can show the uncensored version of
and it goes like this I have grandfather
and his name is doctor a lot of panget
so my grandfather was believing Nazi
until the day he died
and I got to know him when I was a kid
and when he was talking about war he was
telling these very positive adventure
stories about war there riding around
with their horses there was you know
there was they were very close to each
other’s soldiers but it was all very
positive like an adventure story and
only much later I realized when I went
to cover wars when I worked as a
photographer in conflict areas how much
he had actually censored himself how
much he had lied to himself and also how
much he lied to me basically telling me
these adventure stories and so I
included him as a as an epilogue in the
end of the book to show well to to have
a rather painful personal example from
my family of somebody who had really
self-censored himself but then if it’s
almost as meant as a warning if you
combine this self-censorship that we all
have in us with the state ideology like
the Nazi ideology this can be actually
very dangerous so we should be really
really careful with our self-censorship
so the book this has a design feature
which is quite unique some of the pages
in the book are closed so you have to
open them with a knife or letter opener
and you actually have to do something
you have to actively decide if you want
to open these extra pages or not so the
idea is to remind the viewer of his and
her responsibility to make that decision
what do I want to see what is important
what do I have to see okay that was the
first part now the second part thanks
for staying with me through the serious
matter there’s a second set of images
that is rarely published and I had a
folder on my on my desktop while I was
traveling in Iraq and Afghanistan which
was called weird pictures so whenever I
encountered weird pictures during my
practice which was surprisingly often I
would dump the pictures in that folder
and so after publishing the war pawn
book I felt there’s another very
important aspect of war that is
underreported that is really not
considered enough and that is absurdity
so I have I made a book full of these
strange pictures that were created in in
war zones and interestingly there was
more acceptance in the public for the
first book than the second book people
have really really irritated with the
second book because they you know you
don’t laugh about war or something and
what is something terrible we should do
everything we possibly can to avoid
armed conflict but then at the same time
more something deeply human and always
happened and we will always make war and
there will always be some sort of daily
life in war and there will be always
something to laugh about in war also and
it’s much harder to explain this than to
explain the war porn book because
whooping whoa everybody can imagine that
this is somehow horrible but that what
can be you know filled with daily life
with laughter is really hard to
understand
like he was looking for the holes he was
supposed to have created and couldn’t
find them this is one of Saddam
Hussein’s horses he had a huge horse
collection and all the horses were
killed or ran away or they were eaten or
something and so this is the one of the
very few surviving horses of Saddam
Hussein I was quite surprised to find
all these posters of paradise and beauty
in these places so this poster found in
a in a medical aid station set up by the
Iraqi army they had very little supply
that terrible wounds coming in trauma
patients it was quite horrific but had
these posters up of paradise this in
Afghanistan and I was traveling with the
German military and the German
Bundeswehr is probably the only military
in the world who goes to battle with a
foldable toilet and they have regular
paper and wet tissue paper right
this was a War Memorial in Baghdad
created by an Italian architect in the
80s for Saddam Hussein some among you
might know this plant yep marijuana all
over the place
southern Afghanistan the young soldiers
are like 19 you know foot patrol through
like fields and fields of maryam/mary
you on are endless they thought was very
cool but this this stuff is actually
produced for the local markets and the
biggest buyer of this material is the
Afghan army and they’re always good fun
so it was really the official symbol of
this unit was the rainbow they the other
soldiers from the other units thought
it’s quite funny this is in front of a
palace in Tikrit in Iraq during a
ceremony and yeah I was like it it’s
like war as a theater play so to come
back to the what I why I’m here so what
is war really like well I’m actually
quite not quite sure but I think war is
more complicated than we maybe think
what can be more funny than we think
more is definitely more horrible and
horrendous than we think and I think we
should try to do a better job to show
give you an honest picture of what war
can look like thank you
you
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