“War Photographer” by Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy is a poet I greatly admire. Her poems do not rhyme, have a vague (if any) meter, yet I would call it ‘real poetry.’ This is because poetry is an expression of ideas/emotions, an art, and I think that her pieces are nothing short of perfect. “War Photographer” is a piece I have decided to analyze on this website. For some background, Duffy had a friend who was a war photographer and she explores the perspective of men in his profession in this poem. This is written during the Cold War. I shall provide the poem for reference:

In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care.

Firstly, I would like to indicate that the poem starts in darkness. It is now that the war photographer is alone, and his thoughts start to embrace the moral dilemmas he faces. The photos are described as spools in ordered rows. This brings emotion into the inanimate entity. The red (representing death, suffering, terror, bloodshed) light is described to take a backseat, showing how the root of the situation, the tragedy of war, runs in the background of his mind, whilst the dilemmas dominate his conscious attention. She then provides emphasis on the assaults on places like Lebanon, Cambodia, etc. (keep in mind that the poem was written around the time of the Cold War) by using individual sentences for each place. “All flesh is grass” refers to how life came from earth and goes back to it. She also brings the religious aspect into it by mentioning a Mass prayer at the Church, perhaps indicating the religion-induced extremist attacks in the United Kingdom.

In the next stanza, she talks about how “He has a job to do”. The line is ended abruptly, leaving it open, showing the fact that there are different aspects to his job of a war photographer. She brings to our attention that he ought to do his job, either for satisfying his own hunger or as an ethical duty. Next, solutions of the photographs are shown to be slopping into trays. The word solution is used as a homonym, where it also indicates the answers to his problems. They are shown to ‘slop’ as the answers in his head may not satisfy him or may even be disturbing. His hands are shown to tremble here but not while clicking photographs as it is when he waits, when he is idle, that the ethical questions kick in. He is then abruptly transferred to his home, in rural England, where he belongs. His worries are much lower there. She then writes, “…to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat.” She specifically mentions children as it brings more misery and terror into the heart of the reader, and she thinks it will capture the tragedy of the war well.

In this stanza, Duffy describes a scene of war from the perspective of a war photographer. Firstly, she talks of the decay of the corpse of the martyr, describing it as a ‘half-formed ghost’ to further induce the element of death. Next she talks about how the martyr’s wife is mourning the death of her beloved. She talks about how he has to take the photo for his job, and how the martyr dies in a foreign land. She emphasizes on the tragedy dealt by the man’s wife, and how the photographer can do nothing about it. He has to take a photo of the scene without her consent, which is something considered to be wrong, and even a punishable offense. This brings back the moral challenges faced by the war photographer. She also elaborates on how martyrs shed their blood in an alien land, how they fight and loose their lives in a place foreign to them to keep their loved ones safe at home.

In the next stanza Carol Ann Duffy talks about how the world responds to this tragedy in such a cold way. “From which an editor will pick out five of six” shows an apathetic aspect of the editor, where he chooses moments of tragedy to be shown to the public, as though they are inanimate draft products to be finalized. Now, even these selected photos do not make the headlines despite the pain in them but only show up on supplements. The editor is doing his job at running his business, at the end of the day. We also see that the consumer of these photographs is busy, and only pays attention to it for sometime in the day. Both bathing and drinking are activities done for pleasure, and are used to contradict the tragedy in war, and to show how they are irrelevant to the majority of the world. She then writes about how he earns a living by fighting through dilemmas and witnessing the tragedies, whilst the world does not care much. Society coldly ignores it, moving on as it would otherwise.

In the end, I would like to bring the attention of the reader back to the morality of the profession again, as I fear I may not have given justice to the topic. On one side the photographer takes photos of the mourning beloved and the lifeless corpses but does nothing to help them. Yes, he does not have the ability to help them, in most cases, but such a tragedy seen with ones own eyes will, under most cases induce guilt into the heart of a moral man with sentiments pursuing this profession. But at the same time, this is his job. He is either doing this because he sees it as an ethical obligation, to convey the sufferings of war to the rest of the world; or he is doing it for a living, to fill his stomach. Duffy does not elaborate on either, perhaps because she does not want to explore these themes, and is thus left anonymous, and can go both ways.