Conflict Photography

How does one cover a conflict? The conventional way is to show either frontline action with soldiers or the effects it has on human life by photographing death and suffering of people caught up in the conflict. Both, very powerful ways of documenting our inhumanity.

I came across a third way, which had I not seen it, but only been described the method, I would have automatically have suggested that it would not work. It was of the remains of war and specifically the places, or spaces which are abandoned as war settles in and destroys.

Furniture is seen in the living room of a house that was damaged during the Hezbollah-Israel summer war 2006, in Bint Jbeil, south of Lebanon.

The project is called Abandoned Spaces by photographer Dalia Khamissy. I first saw the project at her presentation at Photo Forum in London. It was a unique and surprisingly emotional look at the Lebanon war of 2006. The reason I say emotional is because there isn't a single person in the photographs, but the spaces which they have left abandoned, destroyed by bombs and gunfire, speak so much about who they were and how they lived during happier and more sedate times.

You can see the project HERE and there is an interesting article on her work HERE.