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| Craig J. Barber, "Hope Is All There Was," 1997. |
Award-winning photojournalist Louie Palu, whose photographic collection Zhari-Panjwai: Dispatches from Afghanistan is on display at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, resides in Washington, DC. The weather in Washington, he says, is stiflingly hot. The fact that the American heat bothers him at all comes as a surprise. Mr. Palu just spent three months in Afghanistan, and he will return to the war-torn country in two weeks. Surely the weather there will be much warmer?
āItāll be a hundred degrees,ā Mr. Palu agrees. āItāll be really, really hotā¦ hot and dry and brutal. Itās an extremely unforgiving landscapeā¦ Canadians are almost suited to it,ā he adds ā in terms not of warmth, but sheer extremity of temperature.
Afghanistanās weather is not its most dangerous feature. āWith the troops, I was received very well,ā Mr. Palu says. ā(Other) people shot at me. I would say they were people who did not receive me as well.ā He discusses his close shaves with surreal cool. āIām not the only journalist to ever get shot atā¦ If there were 20 Taliban, and one was a journalist, and a firefight startedā¦Ā I donāt think anyone would say, āHey, that guyās a journalist. Donāt shoot him.āā
What are some of these elusive pieces? āDifferent tribes, different languages, money, road-buildingā¦ thereās not even one road that connects the whole country.ā Mr. Paluās photographs are displayed with an accompanying audio track of battle in Siah Choi. Between gunshots on the track, people yell, gasping breaths, speaking ā in different languages ā the lingua franca of fear.
Craig Barber was an 18-year-old Marine when he first stepped on Vietnamese soil. He returned to Vietnam as a photographer, in 1995ā30 years later. āMy return allowed me to understand who I was, and appreciate who I have become,ā he says. āI was able to learn many aspects about the Vietnamese peopleā¦ that I knew nothing of while there (previously).Ā It was an incredibly cathartic experience.ā Mr. Barber has platinum-printed his suite of pinhole photographs. Invented in 1873, platinum-printingāuncommon in modern photographyāproduces images which are extraordinarily long-lasting.
HisĀ photographs are cryptically named ā in āThe Old Man Served Teaā (1997), for instance, there is no old man and no tea. āMy titles usually reflect what was happening at the moment of the photo,ā says Mr. Barber, ābut also speak to memories of my time there during the war.ā
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| Craig Barber embraces Louie Palu, as curator Alison Devine Nordstrom looks on. (Bruce Bottomley Photo) |
The human figures in Mr. Barberās work are ghostlike, blurred (āAlways Curiousā 1995) or double-exposed (The Gatherersā 1998) into transparency. āWith colour, you state, and with black and white, you suggest,ā he says. āI feel my work leaves more to the imagination than it would if it were in colourā¦ I appreciate my audienceās intelligence, and anticipate their bringing that intelligence into the gallery and their desire to understand the mood of my work.ā His Vietnam is a Pacific dreamscape, radiating a tropical beauty shattered by broken village kilns (āThe Kilns of Vinh Longā 1998) and abandoned hotels (āSapa Hotelā 1997).Ā
Craig Barberās collection from Vietnam, in contrast with the immediacy of Mr. Paluās work, is black-and-white, ethereal, and haunting. Yet what the two collections document is similar: the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan have much in common. āEach fought against a determined insurgency, each destroying the lives of a young generation on both sides of the conflict,ā says Mr. Barber, āand each fought against a culture and a people that we do not understand or are attempting to understandā¦ Wars are brutal. Vietnam was, Afghanistan is, you name itā¦ War is just not pleasant.ā
āIām not so much dealing with a messageā¦ as with documenting reality,ā says Mr. Palu. āIām not trying to show exactly the way Afghanistan isā¦ War for me is all in one box. When someone is shot and dying in front of you, itās pretty much the same thing.ā
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