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We invite anyone interested in submitting a response to this photo
essay, “The Face of War, The Face of Death”, to click
on the link below.
In
addition to your comments, we will also publish your name and the
city or country where you live.
“The
Face of War, The Face of Death” online form
Due
to the volume of submissions, we may not be able to publish all
materials. We reserve the right to edit your response for clarity.
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September 25,
2003
I think this
photoessay only shows the ''suffering'' of palestinian people, but
the Jews also suffers with terrorism and with the attacks of palestinians
terrorist, and if this attacks continues we will still strike back
the terrorist on the painest side.
I SUPPORT THE I.D.F.
Yitzhak
Tel-Aviv, Israel
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September 15,
2003
Only two of
Stevens' "faces" are Jewish. Actually, only one. And they
were "settlers." They could have been identified with
the names of their towns of origin, as are the Palestinians, but
that wouldn't have had the dismissive impact of the generic "settler."
A good number of the Arab dead in the essay were playing football
when killed. Since such deaths cannot possibly represent the true
proportion of Arab dead in the Second Intifada, one again has to
presume a political agenda on Mr. Stevens' part: that Palestinian
dead are overwhelmingly "innocent" victims. No Jewish
victims of suicide bombings are shown.
I saw an image of the Second Intifada that might be edifying here.
It was an x-ray of a 12 year old Jewish girl who had survived a
suicide bombing. Her bones were broken in literally dozens of places,
and her little body was filled with the nuts and bolts that had
been packed into the bomber's vest. It was impossible to believe
that a) this was actually the body of a living human being and that
b) the condition of this little body was not an unfortunate by-product
of the Intifada but was rather the precise intention of the people
(Palestinians) who had planned and executed the bombing.
Lawrence
Jurrist
Hollywood, FL
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September 12,
2003
Warren from
Washington is wrong. Bruno Stevens‚ powerful photoessay is
worse than propaganda: It's propaganda representing itself as documentary
photography. Warren points out that all but two of the victims portrayed
are Arab. (He might have added that one of the two Jews is the only
victim with no face, represented instead by a prayer shawl wrapped
around his body, the same image used on the site's contents page
to give the impression of evenhandedness). But I don't count coups
when it comes to victimization. More significant is that the two
Jews are settlers, and I think most of us agree that the settlers
shouldn't be where they are, least of all by biblical mandate. So
the dead settlers are guilty by definition and implication, at least
among our kind. To wit: Israel targets innocent soccer players (as
the captions insist) while the Palestinians target "hardcore"
Jews (to use Mr. Stevens‚ term). The two Jews are included
as an insurance policy against the criticism that Mr. Stevens is
showing only one side of the story. Where are the busloads of blown-up
Jews? I want to give Mr. Stevens the benefit of the doubt and assume
that their relatives wouldn't let their corpses be photographed
for political gain. Or perhaps the corpses were in too many pieces.
Lest I be accused of shilling for the Zionist cause, I am not a
Jew, my mother-in-law was born in Palestine, and my father taught
Hanan Ashrawi. I am a card-carrying, Rush-Limbaugh's-worst-nightmare
left-winger, though I think many of my fellow travelers need both
self-examination and unbiased lessons in the history, both recent
and ancient, of the Middle East. Having been shocked by the agenda
of Mr. Stevens‚ piece, I went back to the PixelPress site's
front page, and saw it in a new light. It memorializes the victims
of September 11 by pairing a photograph of the Pentagon in flames
with a picture from another terrible September 11 exactly 30 years
ago, of smoke billowing from Chile's presidential palace. The connection
is clever but specious. Since the folks at PixelPress are skilled
editors, I can't help but infer that al Qaeda's attack was karmic
payback for our government's sickening support for Pinochet's overthrow
of the great, democratically-elected Salvador Allende. And that
suggestion does a deep disservice to the memory of our dead. I'm
left to wonder what was intended, in the opening page of the site's
9/11 memorial section, by pairing an image of the wrecked trade
towers with one of ruined buildings in Kabul in 1996. I hope the
connection is just that both photographs contain a small, lonely
figure in the midst of manmade devastation.
I recently wrote a favorable piece about PixelPress in American
Photo magazine. Its people do good, important work. But I'm very
distressed that the visitors I've sent to their site will find Mr.
Stevens photographs. Warren from Washington says that the pictures
"accomplish nothing." He's wrong again: They add fuel
to the fire in the Middle East, and misuse a medium that can, as
we all know, do great good.
Russell
Hart, exec. ed.
American Photo magazine
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September 3,
2003
I find the
images no more than propoganda, that accomplish nothing, are neither
fair nor balanced and furthermore fail to inform the viewers. The
captions are lacking important information and only the images selected
only show Palestinians who were "playing football" when
the Israelis shot them. The image with Sabeh Amu Hamesh who was
killed in his car, makes no mention of why his car was targeted.
The piece has the same journlistic integrity as a piece by Matthew
Bradey. Thanks for sharing it with me.
Warren
Washington, D.C.
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