Saima, a woman in Sarajevo, holds a photograph of her daughter Fadila, who was killed during the Bosnian conflict in 1996. A 48-year-old pediatric dentist conscripted into battlefield surgery, Fadila was shot by a sniper while she was hanging her uniform on a line to dry. This picture was taken on the first anniversary on her death. From The Pain of War, an exhibition at the Mead Art Museum. Photo by Frank Ward, gelatin silver print, 1996, Mead Art museum, museum purchase. |
The Pain of War
Why are we so captivated by images of pain and suffering? Does their presence in our media-saturated world inure us to their awfulness? How do we respond to them emotionally, psychologically, intellectually and politically? What issues of truth, exploitation, aesthetics, history and memory do such images raise?
These are some of the questions that Carol Solomon Kiefer, curator of European art at the Mead Art Museum, hoped to raise with The Pain of War, an exhibition of more than 60 prints, photographs, videos and other images that address the theme of suffering associated with war. The exhibition, which was created by Kiefer, ran at the Mead from October through December and included works from the museum’s permanent collection as well as important loans. The images spanned the 17th century to the present day, documenting the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, World War I and World War II, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Rwanda Massacre, Sept. 11, 2001 and the present conflict in Iraq.
But the exhibition was broader than the images themselves. It included panel discussions, lectures and films. It was even included in the curricula of several classes. One of the elements of the exhibition that was most compelling was a collection of essays and poems written by faculty members who were invited to respond over the summer to whichever images and themes struck them. Those responses, bound in a book available at the exhibition, range from scholarly diagnosis to raw personal recollection, just as the images themselves range from documentation to diatribe. Some examples are included here.
