Critical Analysis of War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy
In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don't explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.
Something is happening. A stranger's features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man's wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.
A hundred agonies in black-and-white
From which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday's supplement. The reader's eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively where
he earns his living and they do not care.
Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow in 1955. She grew up in
Staffordshire and went to university in Liverpool. Having spent some
time in London as a freelance writer, she now lives in Manchester. She
has won many prizes and several awards for her poetry. Her poems, she
says, 'come from my everyday experience, my past/memory and my
imagination. People and characters are fascinating to me'. Many of her
poems are based on true experiences and real people. In the 1970s
Carol Ann Duffy was friendly with Don McCullin, a famous photographer
whose photographs of war were widely published and respected. Her
poem, "War Photographer", (from Standing Female Nude, 1985), is based
on conversations she had with him.
The poem works on a very personal level - it is based on the authentic
experience of a war photographer - and on a much wider level, saying
something about the views and attitudes within our society concerning
things that happen much further away. People are glad to distance
themselves from the harsh realities of war whilst keeping themselves
informed of, and superficially sympathetic to these real life
situations.
The structure of this poem supports this dichotomy in that there are
two contrasting worlds: the world of war zones ("Belfast. Beirut.
Phnom Penh.") and the calmer world of "Rural England". The war
photographer is the man who goes between these two worlds. The safe
world of England is signified by the cliche of a typical Sunday: "The
bath and pre-lunch beers" while the horror of war is expressed through
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It is important that we examine their poems so we can know what they experienced. It is helpful to others because they may have experienced the same situation. They may have also wanted to speak.
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