Shooting Under Fire: The World of the War Photographer

By Peter Howe

Book Overview

"Shooting Under Fire" is the candid testimony and stunning photographs of the men and women who go into battle armed only with a camera to show warfare as it is and where it is. In this volume, ten leading combat photographers relate incidents of horror, humor, bravery, and daring in locations from Vietnam to Haiti, Ramallah to Chechnya, El Salvador to Sarajevo, the World Trade Center to Afghanistan. Here, in their own words, are their stories of life in the combat zone, together with many of the powerful images they risked their lives to obtain. This historical and very human look at the pathos of war also reveals the moral and ethical issues that this elite corps of photographers face, and the decisions they must make in the chaos of conflict. In addition to the works of these talented photographers are iconic images, from the American Civil War to the devastation of the World Trade Center, that tell the story of the development of combat photography and the profound changes in warfare itself that have occurred in the last century and a half.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579652158
• ISBN13: 9781579652159
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Artisan Publishers
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 3.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 10.0" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

The second-best present I was ever given

Shooting Under Fire is an amazing collection of photographs from 10 living combat correspondants (except for one who died while photographing the 9/11 attacks). The color images are stunning in their graphic portrayal of the horrors of war, and the black and white images are intense and gritty in their truth. As a photographer and a Peace Studies major (recently graduated), there was really *nothing* about this book that I didn't love!For the record, the best present I was ever given was a charcoal drawing of one of the photos in this book, created by the same person who gave me the book as a gift!

Startling insights

It's not the photos in this book that captured me -- yes they're astounding, but I've seen many of them before -- it's the journalists' write-ups beside the photos that I found intriguing. I never realized before the angst that haunts war photographers, the guilt that plagues them when they file their photos and stories with their editors. They make money on other people's suffering, yet their photos often help the people who suffer by informing the world of what's going on. But for the most part they can't help the one person they've captured so brilliantly in one frozen moment in time, and because of that many can't sleep at night. They make the world a better, safer place, and pay for it with damaged psyches.

The Art of War

Peter Howe has carefully crafted a stunning book. He combines the images of 10 renowned combat photographers with a stark, spare, and candid narrative, as each describes their work. The book succeeds at many levels. Idealism, adrenaline and ambition are sometimes countered by regret. The photographers are complex and complicated. Some have been wounded -one deliberately by an Israeli soldier, it's alleged- all are battle hardened, streetwise and changed. The reality of war; blood in the snow; dying men; chilling bravado; starving children; crumbled buildings; is on every page. We know what war is like because the photographers are there for us.

A moving, insightful tribute

Peter Howe has assembled a powerful, moving collection of war photographs combined with the recollections of the photographers who made the pictures. At a time when we are on the verge of entering a conflict much like the conflicts covered by these photographers, "Shooting Under Fire" stands as a startling reminder of the grim, merciless and all-too-human realities of war.

Get behind the scenes of the War Photographer

Once I picked up this book I could not put it down. Peter Howe has engaged ten of the most articulate and talented war photographers. Each photographer gives compassionate details about their lives, the pictures they have taken, and the effects of war on themselves and the world. To truly understand why the world needs these photographers and why these photographers do what they do, then you must buy this book!