In Pictures: What does a war photographer shoot after the guns fall silent?
- Text by Alex King
- Photography by Yan Morvan (above: Beirut, Lebanon)
“I was looking back at my pictures from Lebanon in the 1980s and I saw a picture of a dead girl – a beautiful young girl – who had been partially mummified,” explains photographer Yan Morvan. “I asked myself, ‘Oh god, how could I have photographed this?’ But then I remembered how I felt at the time: that I was already dead – I was a zombie. Now I’m not a zombie any more.”
Morvan’s career as war photographer began in 1980, when he bribed a border guard to cover Turkey’s military coup. He’s since reported from numerous conflict zones, including the Iran-Iraq war, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Libya and Lebanon, where he won the Robert Capa prize and two World Press Photo prizes.
Over four decades of covering conflict, he’s become increasingly disillusioned with conventional war photography. His new project Champs de Bataille (Battlefields), takes a different approach to explore 3,500 years of human beings fighting one another. Morvan travelled the globe photographing battle sites: from places he once reported, like Misrata in Libya, stretching back through the centuries to to ancient battlefields, like Troy.
The Strait of Dardanelles, Turkey
Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam
“Life is a battle, all the time,” Morvan explains. “War photography is just pornography. It doesn’t change anything. If people see this guy slaughtering a family or a guy cutting off a man’s head and they say, ‘No more!’ that’s great. But, no. The people in power don’t care and they carry on selling weapons. Photojournalism is pornography: people just get used to it, nothing changed because of my pictures – I think that’s the most important thing.”
During Morvan’s career, he reported from over twenty war zones, took multiple bullets, had a nervous breakdown, escaped a car bombing, was kidnapped by a notorious Paris serial killer and was sentenced to death – twice, during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s. But now it’s photographing battlefields after the guns have fallen silent that gives him the greatest satisfaction. He painstakingly searches for the decisive point, aiming to bring the past to life.
Misrata, Libya
Waterloo, Belgium
“I love working with my 8×10 large format camera,” he explains. “Visiting these places, stopping, thinking, watching the landscape, waiting, coming back and reading about what happened. When I was on the walls of Troy in Turkey, I had the Odyssey and the Iliad with me. Reading them was like a magic carpet ride. You’re flying through the centuries. It’s better than hash or heroin, you know? My magic carpet is my camera and I travel through the centuries with it.”
Stalingrad, Russia
Canyon de Chelly, USA
For Morvan, Battlefields is above all a challenge to the vanity of powerful men who send others to die – and remembrance for those who were sacrificed. “I’ve dedicated years of my life to photography and seen people die,” he explains. “I think, well… everybody has forgotten. The most important thing with this project was to pay tribute to the young soldiers who lost their lives on the battlefield.
“Ultimately, it’s all for powerful men, who fight and divide others,” he continues. “Today, if you travel the world as I’m doing, you see rich people, very wealthy people, with jets, cars, Ferraris and all that. They make people fight for their own vanity – for the diamonds. Battlefields is in memory of, and in tribute to, all those people who died for honour, for their families, for the land.”
Yan Morvan’s Champs de Bataille (Battlefields) is out now, published by Editions Photosynthèses.
You might like
“Magazines are cultural artefacts”: magCulture’s Jeremy Leslie on the enduring importance of print
We love magazines — Despite the ever creeping digitalisation of the world and culture, physical objects are taking on different, yet vital, roles in culture today. Ella Glossop chats to one of London’s biggest proponents of the art about why we need to support independent publications.
Written by: Ella Glossop
The anti-tourism guides revealing Lisbon’s true, radical heart
We Hate Tourism Tours — The Portuguese capital sees millions of people visit a year, against a backdrop of political turbulence and a housing crisis fuelled by short term holiday lets. Jack Burke meets the crew subverting their city’s perception, while bringing lesser seen stories and monuments to light.
Written by: Jack Burke
Defiance and pride in Chicano Camera Culture
A Photographic History — A new major exhibition surveys Mexican American photography over six decades, platforming Chicano artists at a Chicano museum for the first time.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The art of paying attention: How Austria’s Alps reward slowing down
Lebensgefühl — With a growing movement of art and music rooted in the area’s mountains, trees and waterfalls, the region is showcasing the importance of the human relationship to nature.
Written by: Sophie Lou Wilson
Grainy, yearning memories of Europe’s ’90s free rave heyday
Never Alone — A new photobook from Cheyenne Clementi and Valentina Morandi presents pictures they made over seven years while touring the continent as part of the Tekno Mobil Squad soundsystem crew. It archives parties, people and a lifestyle largely consigned to the past.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Queer resistance & sun-soaked solidarity at the world’s largest trans pride march
Our Future, Our Fight — Over the weekend, over 150,000 people marched at the London Trans+ Pride, with the parade ending at Trafalgar Square for the first time in history.
Written by: Ella Glossop
