Killing for Show: Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq

The use of war photography to sway public opinion is discussed in Julian Stallabrass' book "Killing for Show." He argues that this is a lethal form of gesture politics, where lives are ended to create a high-budget snuff movie. Since the Vietnam War, the way we see conflict has had a powerful impact on the political fortunes of the campaign and the way that war has been conducted. Stallabrass offers 190 photographs that encompass photojournalism, artists' images, photographs by soldiers and amateurs, and drones, and provides a comprehensive comparison of the role of photography in the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. He also explains the waning power of iconic images in collective memory, the failure of military PR, and the public display of killing. The book explores the power and limits of amateur photography and argues about how violent images act on democracy.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 354 pages
\n Publication date: 30 December 2020
\n Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
\n

15 essays by leading experts.
In the autumn of 2014, the Royal Air Force released blurry footage of a missile destroying a pick-up truck, which may have been carrying a weapon on its flatbed. This was a deadly form of gesture politics: to send a £9-million bomber from Cyprus to Iraq and back, burning £35,000 an hour in fuel, to launch a smart missile costing £100,000 to destroy a truck, or, rather, to create a video that shows it being destroyed. Some lives are lost—it is impossible to tell whose—so that the government can pretend that it is taking effective action by creating a high-budget snuff movie. This is killing for show.

Since the Vietnam War, the way we see conflict—through film, photographs, and pixels—has had a powerful impact on the political fortunes of the campaign, and the way that war has been conducted. In this fully illustrated and passionately argued account of war imagery, Julian Stallabrass tells the story of post-war conflict, how it was recorded and remembered through its iconic photography.

The relationship between war and photography is constantly in transition, forming new perspectives, provoking new challenges: what is allowed to be seen? Does an image have the power to change political opinion? How are images used to wage war? Stallabrass shows how photographs have become a vital weapon in the modern war: as propaganda—from close-quarters fighting to the drones electronic vision—as well as a witness to the barbarity of events such as the My Lai massacre, the violent suppression of insurgent Fallujah, or the atrocities in Abu Ghraib.

Through these accounts, Stallabrass maps a comprehensive theoretical re-evaluation of the relationship between war, politics, and visual culture.

Killing for Show offers:
190 photographs
15 essays by leading experts.

\n Weight: 1232g\n
Dimension: 223 x 287 x 30 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781538141809\n \n