1. Learning Objective: To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.
Warning: due to the nature of war photography, some students may find the images displayed a bit upsetting. They have been carefully chosen and are a true reflection of war zones in at various places around the world at various time.

3. War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy
A photo is not just an image; it is a trace of reality, an experience captured, a moment. Photography is an art that gives importance to events and makes them worth remembering. It is about telling the reality; about showing what other people are not able to see, to make them aware of it through the images they receive from the media. Thus, when the picture serves as informing, we find ourselves facing at other art—photojournalism. As James Nachtwey states: “If everyone could be there to see for themselves the fear and the grief, just one time, then they would understand that nothing is worth letting things get to the point where that happens to even one person, let alone thousands. But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there, to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on, to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference, to protest, and by the strength of that protest to make others protest
Don McCullin
Philip Jones Griffiths
From the depression years of the 1930s to the arrival of the roving TV cameraman in the late 1960s the photojournalist was seen as the romantic and daring reporter who sent news from the battle fronts and disaster areas of the world. 
The phrase ‘famous photographer’ used in the bizzarest of circumstances today, comes from those four decades when the public looked to mass market picture magazines for still images by star photojournalists like Robert Capa to add depth to their understanding of the major news stories.
Criticism of the way we look at pictures of suffering, but do not know the reality. We can’t relate to it because it’s so different from our lives.

4. One picture is worth a thousand words…
You have some photos in front of you, choose one.
What is being photographed?
How do you suppose the subject of each photo feels?
Who is taking the photograph?
How do you suppose the photographer feels?
Extension:
List 5 adjectives you think describe the image or emotion in the image.
Give out four photos
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.
Starter 3rd March 2017

5. One picture is worth a thousand words… - Chinese Proverb
Kim Phuc with her daughter – this photo is iconic and many believe it helped to hasten the end of the Vietnam war. The photo was taken by a young war photographer Nick Ut (21 years old).
Phuc says her Christian faith brought her physical and emotional peace “in the midst of hatred, bitterness, pain, loss, hopelessness,” when the pain seemed insurmountable. In the photo she is nine years old. She suffered burns across a third of her body from a napalm bomb attack. She is known as the ‘napalm girl’.
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

6. Context Carol Ann Duffy born 1955 Catholic family upbringing
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.
Context
Carol Ann Duffy
born 1955
Catholic family upbringing
poem published in 1985
Appointed Poet Laureate in 2009
friends with two photographers
Sir Don McCullin
Philip Jones Griffiths
Channel
War Photographer gives us another look at war through someone else’s eyes. We see what he sees.
At the time 'War Photographer' was written, Duffy was friendly with Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths, two very well-respected stills photographers who specialised in war photography.
what interested her in writing the poem was the photographer and the difficult decisions he or she might have to make while taking pictures in a war zone.
Assessment Objective 3: Context

7. Put yourself in their shoes…
‘The ability to keep things in perspective is very important for a journalist.
In a tense situation you need the ability to be there, yet somehow step aside; to keep a cool head and keep working without getting frustrated.’
His work took him to more than 120 countries – Best known for his coverage of the Vietnam war. Changed people’s opinions about Vietnam.
Philip Jones Griffiths ( )

8. Put yourself in their shoes…
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.
Put yourself in their shoes…
‘Some times it felt like I was carrying pieces of human flesh back home with me, not negatives. It's as if you are carrying the suffering of the people you have photographed.
…but you have to bear witness. You cannot just look away.
I wanted to bring you, the viewer, as close as I was standing so that you could almost smell the despair and the pain and the suffering I was witnessing.
Photography isn’t about cameras, film, chemistry. It's the chemistry of your own emotion. You release the button on this hopefully everlasting image of people who are in such unfortunate situations.
“From the power elite’s point of view photography is something they cannot control, they thought they were doing quite well until digital photography came along, and with it Abu Ghraib. That was the big wake up call.”
Legendary photographer: Covered conflicts in Nigeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iran.
There is a sense when talking to McCullin that he carries a great burden of loss and regret. He has, he says, seen too much in his lifetime and it has left its mark on him. He is recognised as our greatest living war photographer, though he bridles at the term. "Whatever I do, I have this name as a war photographer," he says, ruefully. "I reject the term. It's reductive. I can't be written off just as a war photographer."
“There are pictures produced which are very, very shocking in as much as they reveal just how the American empire on the rampage right now is behaving. Those pictures cannot be censored because that’s not the nature of the system.” What does happen is people are flooded with so many images that in the end they are confused and the powerful images loose their effect. 
At the same time there is the dumbing down of the media, and picture magazines in particular. Why ? Because a less questioning public is more easy to control in both commercial terms and in political terms. “The thinking mind doesn’t sit well with people who either want to make you buy things that you don’t need at prices that you can’t afford or they want you to believe lies essentially, in political terms.”
McCullin created some of the most memorable images of the early Troubles. During a riot in Derry, he was blinded by CS gas and recovered in a dingy house that reminded him of his working-class upbringing in Finsbury Park in north London.
McCullin famously prints his own photographs. Has he ever developed a print and been shocked by the result. "The albino boy," he says, without hesitation, referring to his heartbreaking image of a starving Biafran child clutching an empty corned beef tin. "The day I came across that boy was a killer day for me. There were 800 dying children in that schoolhouse. The boy is near death. He is trying to support himself. And to see this kind of pathetic photographer appear with a Nikon around his neck …”
His hard-hitting coverage of the Vietnam War and the Northern Ireland conflict is particularly highly regarded.
In 1968, his Nikon camera stopped a bullet intended for him
Knighted in 2017 for services to photography.
Sir Don McCullin (1935 – present day)

9. Photographic processing
Don McCullin: When asked about the rise of digital photography, he said: “Digital photography can be a totally lying experience - you can move what you want, the whole thing can’t be trusted really.
Photographic processing or development is the chemical means by which photographic film or paper is treated after photographic exposure to produce a negative or positive image. Photographic processing transforms the latent image into a visible image

10. The dangerous nature of the war photographer’s job…
Did I get too close?
The answer is yes, and I'm glad I did.
I always use the wide angle lens so it was necessary for me to get even closer.
My main purpose in saying this I wanted to bring you, the viewer, as close as I was standing so that you could almost smell the despair and the pain and the suffering I was witnessing. 
Photography isn’t about cameras, film, chemistry. It's the chemistry of your own emotion. You release the button on this hopefully everlasting image of people who are in such unfortunate situations.
Who would go somewhere dangerous and life-threatening, knowing they might die?
Who would purposefully do a job that could kill them?
This is the dangerous nature of the war photographer’s job.

11. What the War Photographer said…
'Working in a war zone is a compromise... between the perfect shot and staying alive.’
‘The dilemma for the photographer... is the question of what to do - do I take the photograph? Or do I do something to help?’
'The editor's evaluation between a good photograph and a bad photograph can be different from the photographer's... I would perhaps choose images that an editor wouldn't... because I remember all the associations connected to that photograph... it may just be a body, but I might know whose body that is.'
What the poet Carol Ann Duffy said…
'Those photographs are in the background but I'm more interested in the photographer... in the dilemma of someone who has that as a job... to go to these places and come back with the images.'
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

12. In summary…
The photographer has returned home from a war torn country to develop the images he as taken.
In his darkroom he struggles to adjust to life back in England.
After taking the photographers to his editor, he is on an aeroplane heading for a new war torn country.
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

13. Form and Structure 4 regular stanzas 6 lines per stanza
each stanza ends in a rhyming couplet
Very ordered rhyme scheme (ABB, CDD etc.)
controlled structure juxtaposed against often chaotic images
half rhyme – speeds up the line, perhaps implying how quickly people forget
cyclical structure
One interpretation could be that the poet or photographer tries to impose order on structure of war but impossible. This structure is interesting since its very rigid order contrasts with the chaotic, disturbing images described in the poem.
‘tears’ and beers half rhyme
cyclical structure – where does it begin and end? By viewing this issue from the perspective of the photographer, she also reveals the difficulties of such an occupation. By the end of the poem, it is clear her subject straddles two vastly different worlds yet increasingly feels he belongs to neither.
Form – some poems adopt a specific form e.g. sonnet or narrative poem. Many don’t have an identifiable form. Could this be significant and why?
Structure – The way the poet has organised thepoem on the page e.g. the number of stanzas, lines per stanza, breaks in between lines and stanzas.
Language – the power of the individual words or phrases and the overall effect of the language of the poem.
Rhythm and rhyme. Are there rhymes or half-rhymes? Is there a regular rhyme scheme?
Assessment Objective 2
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

14. Analysing the poem (or who, why, where, what and how?)
Annotate ‘War Photographer’. Think about:
From whose perspective are events viewed from?
who is telling the story?
What is happening?
what imagery is used to illustrate this?
When and where is (the stanza you are looking at) set?
how do you know this?
How would you describe the tone being used?
do you get any impressions of the speaker’s feelings or emotions?
Can you identify any poetic devices such as repetition, alliteration, similes, enjambment, caesura, metaphors?
Extension:
Referring to question 5, why does the poet use each one and what effect do they have on the reader? Use examples from the poem.
Structure
Meaning
Imagery
Language
Effect
To analyse ’Remains’ by the poet Simon Armitage and comment on the context, themes and structure of the poem.

15. Adjective ‘alone’ signifies isolation – he is removed from the conflict.
sibilance: repeated ‘s’ sounds. Spools are rolls of film.
darkroom: darkness has connotations of fear and the unknown OR maybe tranquillity
AO1: interpretation A B C D
In his darkroom he is finally alone with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows. The only light is red and softly glows, as though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass. Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
religious imagery:
church
priest
mass
‘ordered rows’ - pews/ graves
red light - sanctuary lamp
simile comparing the darkroom to a church
‘Red’ has connotations of death, danger and war - contrasts with ‘softly’.
Plosive ‘B’ and ‘P’ sounds - percussive
darkroom: darkness has connotations of fear and the unknown – he doesn’t fully know what his photos will have captured until he has developed them…
The screams and chaotic noises of the war zone are contrasted with the quietness of the darkroom - 'as though this were a church and he / a priest'.
Most of the poem is an extended flashback, then brought back to the present. So is out of chronological order.
Chronological order – focus in and out of the poem
All flesh is grass – biblical reference
The Sanctuary Lamp. Because of the honor given to Christ's body and blood, a red votive candle, known as the sanctuary lamp, is traditionally lit beside the tabernacle to show that it contains the consecrated elements.
The poem contrasts the peaceful sounds and security of the darkroom where the photographer is printing his pictures with the 'nightmare heat' and chaos of the battle zone.
The soft red glow of the safelight is set against the colours of the battlefield - blinding flashes and 'blood stained into foreign dust'.
All flesh is grass – all return to the earth, from Isiah
ceasura forces us to stop and think about these areas where conflict is part of every day life
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

16. oxymoron
sibilance
onomatopoeia
caesura: the poet uses two full stops in the middle of the line. This might be emblematic of how photographers have to separate what they see in order to deal with it.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands which did not tremble then though seem to now. Rural England. Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel, to fields which don't explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat.
He has a job to do, but what is that job? Is it the developing of the photographs or is it in telling the world what is going on in other conflicts around the world.
Extended metaphor – the photographs are being developed
Rural England – landscape is now his heaven. It is as far away from those images as he can get. Juxtaposed against ‘nightmare heat’ – recall Remains Armitage Sun kissed sand struck
Home – place of safety and security
Noun ‘home’ signifies a place of safety
‘running children in a nightmare heat.’
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

17. metaphor ‘a half formed ghost’
sibilance
Something is happening. A stranger's features faintly start to twist before his eyes, a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries of this man's wife, how he sought approval without words to do what someone must and how the blood stained into foreign dust.
‘He remembers the cries of this man’s wife, how he sought approval without words to do what someone must…’
foreign dust
The vivid and bitter memories of the photographer - 'the cries / of this man's wife' - associated with the photographs he has taken in difficult situations are contrasted with the casual involvement of the photographer's audience - the readers of the Sunday papers, whose editor has chosen 'five or six' of the photographer's most dramatic pictures for their Sunday morning entertainment.
alliteration ‘without words’
Does the blood stain remind you of any other poems we’ve analysed?
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

18. L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.
A hundred agonies in black-and-white from which his editor will pick out five or six for Sunday's supplement. The reader's eyeballs prick with tears between bath and pre-lunch beers. From aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns a living and they do not care.
The reader is temporarily affected by what they see.
A hundred agonies – what does this emphasise? Or tell us?
In the final two lines of the poem, who do you think he is referring to?
Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy (Poet Laureate of the UK) examines the life of a war photographer who takes pictures of conflicts for British newspapers.
Duffy takes us inside the man’s thoughts and work, evoking both the brutality of war and the indifference of those who live in comfort. The mood is sombre and depressed.
Structure The poem comprises four stanzas of six lines each. There is a subtly complex rhyme scheme with the second and third lines and the fifth and sixth lines of each stanza rhyming. Duffy uses assonance as in ‘six’ and ‘prick’ in stanza four, and internal rhyme, as in ‘tears’ and ‘beers’, also in stanza four. The rhyming couplets give a concise, neat structure which suggests constraint and formality, underlining the understated meaning of the poem. The photographer clearly isn’t given to wild rants; rather sober depression.
Language and Imagery The language is constrained and understated, with lexical fields relating to photography, e.g. ‘darkroom’, ‘spools’, ‘solutions’, and war e.g. ‘aeroplane’, blood' and ‘explode’ and religion e.g. in stanza one ‘church’ and ‘Mass’ and in stanza three the ambiguous reference to ‘dust’.
In the final two lines of the poem the reader is confused (perhaps intentionally) as to who 'they' are. Is the photographer staring down from his aeroplane as he returns to the battlefield looking at the houses of his readers who 'do not care' - or is he leaving the battlefield where it is the dead who 'do not care'?
Who does he mean?
-the readers of those Sunday supplements?
-the Editor?
-the dead who ‘do not care’?

19. Analysing language… Assessment Objective 2 Technique
Evidence from ‘War Photographer’
Effect/Purpose
Sibilance
‘spools of suffering’
The ‘s’ is quite a long drawn out sound which could emphasise the photographer having lots of rolls of film documenting suffering.
Rhyme or half rhyme
Oxymoron
Alliteration
Simile
Imagery
Enjambment
Caesura

20. Interpretations - Unlocking meaning
Use as a REMINDER that no asnwer is wrong provided you back up your interpretation with evidence from the text.
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.
Assessment Objective 1

21. What different types of power and conflict can we see
What different types of power and conflict can we see? (60 seconds to discuss)
Power
Power of the photographer to depict what is happening.
Lack of power to actually intervene and help.
Power of the media to select the images they want to show.
Power of violence and fear.
Power of Duffy as a poet and photographer similar? They are able to express their opinions but not actually intervene in the horror of war.
Conflict
War zones.
Fighting/ death.
Internal conflict of the photographer.
Conflict / contrast between children growing up in England and those in war zones.
L.O. To analyse ’War Photographer’ in the context of power and conflict.

22. Point – Evidence - Explanation
How does the photographer feel about his experience of war?
How could you link this to ‘power’ or ‘conflict’?
Example
It can be difficult for us to relate to suffering in faraway countries and so to make us empathise with the war photographer, Duffy has to use some disturbing and powerful images. In the poem she says we live by 'Fields which don't explode beneath the feet Of running children in a nightmare heat.’ This image is effective because we would normally think of 'running children' in 'fields' as a carefree image of childhood. Duffy does not tell us specifically what the children are running from other than describing some kind of 'nightmare heat', leaving it up to us to imagine our worst fears.

23. SQUAD How does the photographer feel about his experience of war?
How could you link this to ‘power’ or ‘conflict’?
Example
It can be difficult for us to relate to suffering in faraway countries and so to make us empathise with the war photographer, Duffy has to use some disturbing and powerful images. In the poem she says we live by 'Fields which don't explode beneath the feet Of running children in a nightmare heat.’ This image is effective because we would normally think of 'running children' in 'fields' as a carefree image of childhood. Duffy does not tell us specifically what the children are running from other than describing some kind of 'nightmare heat’, leaving it up to us to imagine our worst fears.
Now mark each other’s work and give a score out of 30. There are 4 extra points on offer for correct spelling and punctuation!

24. critical, exploratory, well-structured argument
26-30
Response is:
critical, exploratory, well-structured argument
supported by a range of references (AO1)
analysis of language and form and structure supported by subject terminology (AO2)
Convincing exploration of one or more ideas/ interpretations (AO3)
21-25
thoughtful, detailed and developed
references integrated into interpretation (AO1)
detailed examination of the effects of language and/or structure and/or form supported by subject terminology (AO2).
Examination of ideas/ deeper meanings (AO3).
16-20
demonstrates clear understanding
uses a range of references effectively to illustrate and justify explanation (AO1
clear explanation of the effects of a range of writer’s methods supported by subject terminology (AO2). Clear understanding of ideas/ contextual factors (AO3)
PEER ASSESSMENT

25. https://www. audiopi. co
poetry-anthology-power-and-conflict/narration-of-war- photographer-by-carol-ann-duffy
mccullin-shaped-war-review
Only use if needed – audio version