While visiting the great Edward Weston at the Getty, saw another astonishing photo exhibit by the daringly amoral photographer Luc Delahaye. As this fascinating story in Artnet about a gallery show four years ago reveals, he worked as a war photographer in Bosnia, but after a few years there had to give up the traditional photojournalist belief that taking pictures of horrors would help anything. With this abdication of hope, he found his voice — a disturbing one. For me his most memorable picture in the exhibit was the one below, of a dead Taliban Soldier, lying in a ditch, completely at ease.
Coincidentally, a report in the Washington Post yesterday said that according to intelligence and military sources, we are winning the battles in Afghanistan, but losing the war.
U.S. troops number more than 25,000 and make up the largest contingent
of the 41,000-member NATO force in Afghanistan. NATO officers say they
have eliminated Taliban leaders and fighters in higher numbers than in
any previous year. But such claims of success reflect "a very tactical
outlook in a game that is strategic," said a former U.S. senior
commander in Afghanistan who shares many of the intelligence
community’s concerns. "I have a lot of respect for [Taliban] strategy,"
he said. "These guys are not cowardly by any stretch of the
imagination."
Looks that way, doesn’t it?
Kit Stolz 