The evening will showcase Duley’s photographs from Erbil, where Emergency UK has set up a surgical centre. Giles will be joined by one of Emergency’s doctors – Dr Jasmine Armour-Marshall to discuss his photography. The main focus of the discussion will be on the medical and humanitarian impact of the fighting in Mosul and the effect this will have on the people there for years to come.
Speakers
Chair: Iain Overton is an investigative journalist, author and the Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence. AOAV is a charity that investigates the impact of explosive weapons and small arms on civilians around the world. Overton has reported on Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Jordan, Mexico, Columbia to name just a few. His human rights reporting has earned him a Peabody Award and two Amnesty Awards.
Giles Duley works tirelessly to highlight the otherwise untold stories in the most dire environments today. His eminent work has earned him a nomination for the Amnesty International Media Award in 2010 and he was the winner of the Prix de Paris, 2010 and 2012. His work has also come at a huge personal cost when in 2011 while on patrol with the 75th Cavalry Regiment, United States Army in Afghanistan, Duley stepped on an IED. He was severely injured losing both legs and an arm.
Dr Armour-Marshall is a paediatrician, humanitarian and child at heart; Jasmine has recently returned from the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq where EMERGENCY provide primary healthcare for refugees and internally displaced people. She cared for children and families and gave support and training to local healthcare professionals.
Emergency provides free, high-quality healthcare to victims of war, poverty and landmines, alongside building hospitals and training local medical staff. Founded in 1994 Emergency has treated 8 million people in 17 different countries and currently operates in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Sudan and Italy.
Watch Duley’s TED talk on the Legacy of War and Syria here:
http://legacyofwar.com/power-story-tedx/
See some of Duley’s work and interviews for the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/03/giles-duley-photographs-syrian-refugees-lesbos
]]>Letters to Myself, which screened at the Frontline Club on Monday 14 April, follows Russian photographer Oleg Klimov as he returns to the places he documented during the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and into the 2000s. The film combines Klimov‘s memories with the stories of the people he photographed at the time.
Director Masha Novikova spent some time filming Klimov in Chechnya in 2000 and later in 2003–05 whilst working on a different film but has known Klimov for over 20 years and has wanted to film him at work for just as long but it took some time to secure funding.
Novikova said through a translator after the screening:
“It was my first war and my first time in a ruined city and of course it was quite tragic for me . . . for Oleg it hasn’t been the first time so . . . he was much more cynical than I was.”
Klimov, speaking through the translator via Skype from his mother’s home near Moscow which appears in the film, spoke about how he felt being the subject of the film instead of being behind the camera:
“It did take us quite a long time, Masha and I, the crew, everybody was looking for the people we were asking about, trying to find out about their stories and it was a very moving, very emotional time for me, as you can imagine 20 years later. It took me back to those times.”
Oleg Klimov speaks via Skype at the Frontline Club
A question from the audience asked what he thought had changed in Grozny, having been back to since the war? Klimov said:
“I’ve actually seen Grozny during three times, pre-war, wartime and post-wartime. . . . These are three completely different realities.
“The first reality is basically Chechnya the republic, just like perhaps the majority of post-Soviet republics. People just lived normal lives, it was not very exciting, nothing was really happening. Although you could see that conflicts started breaking out.
“ . . . The second reality is the reality of war which is again quite similar to any . . . place which is in the state of war, which is terror and horror.”
“ . . . The third reality, which I’ve witnessed the most recent time I’ve been to Chechnya was last year, . . . that feeling was basically surreal, because when you walk down the street knowing about the two previous realities, having seen all that I’ve seen, the question rises that you do not understand what it was all for, why did it all happen? . . . All this money that went first on the wars, and then to restore the city it’s just incomprehensible.”
A further question from the audience asked, how did Grozny change so quickly, who rebuilt it?
Klimov said:
“This can be what we call compromise at best for the Russian government. . . . Because they couldn’t win the war in Chechnya . . . the idea was to buy peace there. . . . They’ve invested a lot of money . . . but the price that the people are paying, that’s where . . . the fear comes from. . . . There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of expression. . . . That’s the price they pay for peace and stability.”
What was it all for? People versus characters: what's left when the motherland gets covered in skyscrapers @frontlineclub with @PhotoAmmon
— Rasa Jusionyte (@rasajusionyte) April 14, 2014
Novikova added:
“Even though it [the war] was a terrible time people did speak out very freely . . . about defending the land and about being free and independent. And I felt a huge respect and love for these people . . . but now I see that even my friends they try to avoid calling things as they are, they use very vague language.”
How does Klimov approach the wars he photographs? How does he feel about the wars as a Russian?
The translator explained:
“It’s very difficult being a Russian, while Russia is fighting Chechnya because of course this dilemma of being a citizen of Russia and being a journalist, . . . [he was] trying to find ways to be neutral, to be right on the front line, not choosing sides. It was really difficult. . . . At one point, Oleg decided that he is going to be guided by a principle, he is not actually going to choose a nation or a people but he is going to be empathetic with the weakest one or the side that is unarmed.”
And what are Klimov’s thoughts on the recent outbreak in Crimea?
]]>“It’s a very absurd and strange situation when we have these polite armed men with Kalashnikovs who nobody knows who they are but everybody knows that they are either special forces or private army that is linked of course to Russia. But it’s not the official troops, it’s not the official Russian army so it’s a strange situation where everybody understands but nobody actually names it or discusses it as official Russian army.”
For 12 years, Oleg Klimov documented the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1990s he witnessed almost all the conflicts and ethnic tensions of the region. His photographs appeared on the front pages of many Western newspapers, silent witnesses of conflict in the former Soviet Union.
Personally affected by his experiences as a war photographer and longing for inner peace, Klimov returns to some of the areas he photographed during wartime: Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and Chechnya. Director Masha Novikova follows Klimov on this journey, combining his memories with the stories of the people he photographed at the time.
Directed by Masha Novikova
Duration: 83′
Year: 2013
On Friday 18 January the sound of spontaneous applause rang out from the upper room at the Frontline Club as the Bafta nominated documentary ‘McCullin’ came to an end. The room was packed despite the snow, and there was eager anticipation in the air for the Q&A with director Jacqui Morris and producer David Morris, which followed the screening.
Through intimate interviews with Don McCullin and his former editor at The Sunday Times, Sir Harold Evans, ‘McCullin’ chronicles the photographic escapades of the renowned photojournalist, and gives a unique insight into his experiences. The film also uses extensive archive footage and incorporates many of Don McCullin’s photographs, some of which were previously unseen. Director Jacqui Morris described the process:
We shot the film in three days, and archive research and post production was 18 months – a massive job!
Don McCullin became famous for his harrowing images of warfare and humanitarian disaster, which were published in The Sunday Times magazine throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s. These publications, Jacqui Morris explained, were to become of central importance to the film:
I think they are hugely important in the film, the [Sunday Times] magazines, hugely important, because we’ve all grown up with those Don McCullin shots, but actually when you see them as double page spread as somebody would see them on a Sunday morning . . . the truth you know, from a truthful photographer, there is nothing like that now, nothing like it. And I think they’re incredibly important.
An audience member pointed out how the film also provides a history of warfare in the latter half of the 20th century. Jacqui Morris explained how this element of the film evolved:
That came as I was reading the [Sunday Times] magazines, I thought if I don’t know [about these things] other people might not know.
Producer David Morris added:
It was an organic process but we thought it was an interesting process to show people the history of the second half of the 20th century.
The discussion also explored the comparisons between Don McCullin’s printed images and new trends in photo-based journalism, affected by the image-saturated landscape of social media:
[There is] an infinitely huge amount more information now than you had then, and so those images that you got in The Sunday Times, and other magazines, had a much bigger impact than they’d ever do now. I don’t think it’s fair, really, to expect any publication to ever have that kind of influence again, it just will not happen.
But David Morris added that:
There is a thing about still photography and the still image that really does haunt you.
For information on future screenings, you can visit the film’s Facebook page here.
]]>"I think I did more good as a war correspondent than I ever did as a serviceman," Waters said last week. "Besides all the things I covered, as a war correspondent I got the ear of the four-star general. I could openly question his methods and strategies, and that influenced the treatment and handling of troops."
"I was doing what I loved to do, what I was always proud to do,
"I have loved every day and every assignment… I have somehow realized all of my childhood dreams. Can’t beat that." link
The 81 year old is hoping to attend a World War II veterans day for the Emerald Coast Honor Flight in Washinton D.C. on April 29. Waters was wounded five times while photographing military operations. He was one of six photojournalists inducted into the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame in 2008.
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