BAGnewsNotes

Haiti: Convoy to Nowhere

Two questions:

How FUBAR is the process of delivering aide accumulating at the Port au Prince airport? And, why -- after seventeen days -- isn't there more basic coordination taking place between the US Military and the UN?

And why is it, seventeen days later (thanks to an intrepid freelance photojournalist -- but no thanks to Anderson) that we're only just seeing pictures of this now?

Caption: The U.S. military told the convoy to go to a nearby port, but U.N. soldiers there wouldn’t let the trucks in. The new plan: go to the airport.

My War. No, Your War. No...

His war?

I'm locked away this weekend creating a presentation for PhotoWeekDC next month. The title is: The President's Personality: Piecing the Pictures Together. One element I address in passing is the pervasive, almost ubiquitous visual presence of the President. Not to delve into the presentation too much but I don't think the high quotient of Obama face time has to do with narcissism or a "Messiah complex" (as many wingnuts drone on about). I believe the explanation, if anything, is much more the opposite. I think Obama has such an overarching sense of "the buck stops here," he needs to stand up for almost everything coming out of the White House himself.

But, what does that have to do with the latest NYT Magazine cover?

Facing Afghanistan

The image above by photographer and friend of BAGnews (1, 2) Peter van Agtmael leads a NYT audio slide show, "Two Weeks in Forever" (and though I'm not 100%, I think these photos will also be featured, as part of this article, in the upcoming NYT Mag).

The photo doesn't just bring into sharp focus the haplessness of the U.S. engagement, but crystallizes it and shouts it out. The faces and the framing convey the American troops as directionless, ultimately on their own and verging on humiliation. Adding the really young-looking fourth guy to the mix ( an Afghan translator, perhaps?) drives home the sense of these troops as lost and scared (and, to many right wingers, emasculated) children. And then, the make-shift, light porous roof it that much more evidence of a fundamental lack of a foothold (especially for the fourth guy) from the fuzzy situation just beyond.

(image: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum, for The New York Times. caption: A DAILY BATTLE Members of the 2/8 Battalion in Garmsir. Inside the town, life is fairly normal. Outside, the Taliban are a constant threat.)

Outside Heath Ledger's Apartment

(click for larger size)

"For the illusion of credibility, it had to be framed as a tribute to a legacy,
instead of about earning money and ratings."

Deviating a bit from our usual, Peter van Agtmael forwarded these images to The BAG.  (If you remember, Peter offered us photos, two months back, of soldier's graffiti from a U.S. staging facility in Kuwait.)  As Peter relates:

These are pictures I snapped outside Heath Ledger's apartment on the night of his death. By the time I got there, the media hubbub had died down a bit, but I think these still represent the bizarre scene that ensued.

In this first image, with the photographers gathered, I could see this being made to look bigger than it was.  But this memorial of flowers was just a small tribute set up by one person -- like something you might see on the roadside for the victim of a car crash.  Because this was not an event of public grieving, the little memorial speaks to that.

Overall, there hasn't been much appreciation for the guy, and there has been little celebration for his work as an actor.  If anything, it seems there has been much more of an interest in his toxicology test.  Its been a pretty negative, if unsurprising reflection on media and humanity.

I think this second photo is the best one I took that night.  Posing for a picture, these two girls are clearly smirking but pretending to cry.

*** ** ***

Part of the reason I decided to go down to photograph the scene was a certain feeling of bitterness.  Last year, I shot a story about the life and death of a friend, a young army medic I met in Baghdad, who died of a drug overdose.  The circumstances of his death were equally ambiguous, but there is no doubt that his life was a mess, with severe PTSD from two tours to iraq coupled with the disintegration of his marriage.

When I heard about Ledger, the two stories seemed to fuse in my mind, saying something about how lives are valued in this country.

>> If you have questions or comments for Peter, he'll be available to respond in the discussion thread. <<

(images: © Peter van Agtmael/Polaris Images.  New York.  January 2008.  Used by permission.)

All You Need Is Heroin: U.S. Troops In Their Own Hand

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Epitaphs.  Reasoned opposition.  Doubt.  Fatalism.  Bravado.  Anger.  Bitterness.  Hate.  Faith, and blind faith.  Commemoration.  Castigation.

Photographer Peter van Agtmael has made two trips to Iraq and one to Afghanistan in the past couple years.  Among his work over that time is a series, the idea of which is eminently logical, but which I haven't seen before.  To capture a more raw if performative picture of the U.S. soldier's experience, Peter photographed graffiti on the bathroom wall at a major traffic point for U.S. troops, the Al Salem Air Force Base in Kuwait.

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6  7
8  9

I have some brief reactions to a few of the images.  (In #1, for example, I am struck how someone, obviously quite religious, ended up phrasing this as a question.  And I see #3 as speaking to the emotional monster of the killing field, and how quickly feelings become a liability, needing to be numbed out.)

Primarily though, I'm interested in what you are seeing and thinking here.  (All images pop open to a larger size.)

For additional photos, see this article at the ABCnews site.  (Click on the Photo link with the caption: Scared, Bored and Lonely -- The Horror Written On The Latrine Wall.")  More of Peter's images are also available at the World Press Photo site, where he won a Story Award for coverage of a night raid in Iraq.

(images: © Peter van Agtmael/Polaris Images.  Kuwait.  2006.  Used by permission.)