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I love photography, as it allows me to educate myself on the subjects I could not have possibly be a part of. It fulfills my curiosity, and keeps the inquisitive character of the mind alive and opinionated. Lately, I have discovered that photography holds a lot more then a beauty of artistic skill – it is a teacher, a prophet, and a wise man as long as one lets himself to be genuinely involved in a silent conversation with the pictures.
I want to share my thoughts and impressions from the photo exhibition called Requiem, which was held in Daytona Beach, Florida.
It is a collection of the photographs created by the photographers who died in Vietnam and Indochina during the war.
Requiem
The streams of tears can not wash off the rivers of blood. A war continues as long as it hurts somebody. I visited the war yesterday. It hurts. Photography, created with a careless light and paper caused me pain. It had no bullets, but it shot.
How can people ever deserve this? One of the pictures shows a tiny Vietnamese soldier, injured, barely able to walk. His captures, two American soldiers hold him by his arms, pulling him forward. They avoid looking into the camera, their eyes are piercing the ground from shame and hidden protest. What a misery to get involved into a mess of war and be honored for inhumane actions. Killing is killing no matter what the reason is. People, who are forced to kill others, know this better then anyone else. An American photographer, Kyoichi Savada, made that picture in 1996. He died in 1970 in Vietnam.
Did you ever see despair in people’s eyes? In 1966 Dana Stone made an incredible photo called “Detaining the Suspects”. On that picture American soldiers surround an innocent Vietnamese family. Viewers do not see faces of the soldiers, whom are wearing masks. All they see is the scared, cautious faces of a man, woman, and their children, staring at the automatic guns, helpless to escape sudden, dangerous turn of their fate. The dirty water of the narrow river covers half of their bodies, as if they are already half-dead. The most unforgettable detail is the figure of the Vietnamese woman in the center. Her facial expression is marked with a restrained anger and an indelible pride. Her teenage children stand somewhat behind her as if looking for a shield. That family was not executed, says the text under the photograph, but I have looked with their eyes at the face of death, which is a face of war.
Next photograph, called “A Dying Child,” struck me. It was made by Photographer Son Vichith and shows a bombing of Phnom Penh in Cambodia in 1975. The photo depicts a group of people actively discussing the event of bombing, and the screaming woman in a middle of the square, holding her child, who is covered with blood. Woman’s lonely, agonizing figure seems to be unnoticed by anybody else, along with her dying girl. The entire event seems to be unrealistic. Woman’s nails have a manicure with nail polish on them, with her neatly brushed hair and accurate outfit she does not seem to belong to a site of war. Her girl wears clean, pressed clothes, and only the skirt got dark from the blood. Someone stopped the usual way of life, and put an innocent child on a scale of war. There were no Asian Madonnas in a history of Art. This one is. This mother’s unbearable grief over the death of her child shows no sacrifice, tough, but unfairness and ugliness of war.
The streams of tears can not wash off the rivers of blood. War continues as long as it hurts somebody. With this Requiem, history reads us its painful lessons.
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Gulnara
Не от мира сего-я стихами дышу
И у жизни лишь рифмы прихода прошу.
Мне с лихвою из свитка отрежет она
Стихотворного беленого полотна.
Мне писать-не марать,
Мне взлететь-не упасть.
Мне бы только на строчку
Сердца стук нанизать.
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