Book Review: Geert van Kesteren’s Why Mister, Why? and Baghdad Calling
In 2004, Artimo published Why Mister, Why? a book of photographs by Dutch photographer Geert van Kesteren (one of the newer members of Magnum). Van Kesteren had been embedded with US troops in Iraq that were waging war against Sadam Hussein during 2003-4. Working for Newsweek, van Kesteren was witness to everything that war brings: civilian and military deaths, both intentional and accidental, as well as rampant destruction of homes, businesses, and all manner of societal infrastructure. The book is ultimately a partisan one, but van Kesteren lays the mantle of blame on the shoulders of politicians and governments rather than the soldiers themselves.
The book feels like a magazine—thin glossy pages for the images alternating with newspaper stock for the pages of text are serrated along the edges as though they’ve come off the same presses that print up daily newspapers. This “magazine” is 544 pages, though, which seems to carry several layers of meaning. First, Van Kesteren (and/or the publisher) realizes that this work is created and meant primarily for a periodical format. Printing it on magazine stock paper acknowledges that. This device also speaks to the lack of any substantial number of magazines that are able to publish extended stories of this nature; this is a fact to be lamented. The choice of materials and design also speaks to an awareness that this is a book length project but not a group of photographs that are intended for the gallery wall, nor for the pages of a hardbound “monograph.”
Martin Parr and Gerry Badger include the book in Volume 2 of The Photobook: A History, giving the book an instant cult classic status. It is well-deserved, to be sure. Here is the final paragraph of the accompanying blurb (p. 258, Chapter 7, The Camera as Witness. The ‘Concerned’ Photobook since World War II).
“Not all the incidents shown are detrimental to the argument of the Bush administration. There is a harrowing sequence on the exhumation of those murdered by the Saddam regime. Van Kesteren also frequently shows the faces of soldiers who clearly dislike what they are doing. But overall, Why Mister, Why? is a damning indictment of what at the moment showed every sign of being another Vietnam.”
Van Kesteren also put together an amazing website for the book project, providing an interactive way of accessing the depth and breadth of the project, which weighed in at over 500 pages.
Now, three years after the publication of Why Mister, Why? Geert van Kesteren has just released Baghdad Calling, a follow-up book published by episode publishers in Rotterdam.
“Where violence dominates, people flee, and in Iraq that has been seen on a massive scale,” Jan Gruiters writes in the foreword. More than two million Iraqis have fled the country, crossing primarily over the borders of Jordan, Syria. This fact is the basis for Baghdad Calling. Van Kesteren’s thesis for this project is stated in his opening essay: “This book approaches the daunting complexity of the war from the perspective of the individual refugee.”
Van Kesteren takes the same political stance as Philip Jones Griffiths in his classic of war photojournalism Vietnam, Inc., focusing his attention on the impact that the war has on non-combatants and, in this case, the ripples that the refugees have made as they spread beyond the borders of Iraq.
Confronted with an ever-widening geography as he traveled beyond the area of immediate battles, Van Kesteren searched for more expressive ways to convey the complexity of the situation. “My photography did not in any way square up to the horror of the stories of the refugees,” he explained. “It missed what I see as the cornerstone of my photojournalism: the laying bare of the essence of a situation and making that visual through the perspective of the individual.”
In her essay, Brigitte Lardinois brilliantly sums up the situation that Van Kesteren was confronted with. He solved the puzzle of creating as powerful a statement as possible by looking to the refugees themselves and how they used photography—mobile phone photography in particular—to map out their families, friends, fears and hopes for a new Iraq. Van Kesteren gathered hundreds of cell phone photographs and compiled them, edited them, sequenced them with scant few of his own photographs, to tell a much broader story.
From Brigitte Lardinois: “By giving such prominence to those pictures, Van Kesteren took a bold step. His own work no longer takes central place in this publication; it is a book that gives the Iraqis their own voice. Their story is of paramount importance in this book, not the photographs of Van Kesteren.
“Van Kesteren collected data. This book is therefore a new departure in photojournalism. Many photographers are looking for ways to enhance the power of their message. They are forced to do this by a dearth of editorial outlets in the West. Assignments from magazines and newspapers seem to be dwindling, challenged by the new media offering interesting means of telling stories and conveying information.
“It is notable that photographic books can be seen as a medium that is heading in new directions. Now that magazines are showing less interest in probing stories, photographers are turning to autonomous production of a medium tailored to their personal wishes and vision. A book is a wonderful medium for this, as are websites and multimedia. There is agreater leeway to explore stories in depth, to add nuance, broach aspects for which no space is available in conventional media such as a magazines and newspapers.”
Visit the Baghdad Calling website. Purchase the book at a fine, independent bookstore near you!
Tags: Geert van Kesteren, Iraq War, The Photobook: A History