War torn

This book consists of number of photographs taken by some 30 or so leading war photographers covering, roughly, the decade from 1973 until 1983. The photographs cover a very wide variety of conflicts, many consisting of civil wars and internal repression, across the globe. The photographs are not intended as a record of military campaigns or martial glory or military hardware but, instead, chronicle the human suffering imposed by these wars. In that regard they are very, very powerful. The photographs very much remind one of Francisco Goya’s collection of etchings, widely referred to as “The Disasters of War”, that captured the human suffering resulting from the Napoleonic wars in the Iberian Peninsula. That collection is one the most powerful and moving of illustrations anywhere and across human history chronicling the human suffering resulting from war. The photographs in this book match Goya’s illustrations in that regard. That is saying a lot. Five stars.