In order to answer an essay question on any poem, it is essential that you understand what it is about. This section includes:
- The poem in a nutshell
- An explanation of the poem, line-by-line
- A commentary of each of these lines, outlining Satyamurti's intention and message
'War Photographer' in a nutshell
'War Photographer' is partly set in a fictional urban war zone that reflects many of the armed conflicts of the 1980s. The poem is a dramatic monologue, in which the speaker, a war photographer, analyses the moral implications of creating images that can create a false representation of war. The speaker compares a pair of photographs she has taken; one is of a laughing pair of privileged young women and one is of a young girl carrying a baby. The second image is taken in the moment before a bomb explodes. However, when the photograph is published, the caption presents it as a hopeful image. Satyamurti criticises the way that pictures can tell an untrue story, and people’s unwillingness to engage with the truth.
'War Photographer' breakdown
Lines 1–8
“The reassurance of the frame is flexible
– you can think that just outside it
people eat, sleep, love normally
while I seek out the tragic, the absurd,
to make a subject.
Or if the picture’s such as lifts the heart
the firmness of the edges can convince you
this is how things are”
Explanation
- The edges of a picture, its “frame”, can be interpreted in different ways
- The frame can safely contain the picture, separating it from reality:
- This allows people to believe that everything outside the frame is fine, and that people’s lives are unaffected
- They don’t see what the war photographer sees when she takes the picture:
- She looks for tragic and absurd images and experiences them personally
- Therefore, she knows the reality of what is outside the frame
- However, if the picture is a happy one, people can convince themselves that it is a true representation of life:
- They choose to see the picture’s “edges” as solid, with nothing disturbing going on beyond them, so they can convince themselves that “this is how things are”
Satyamurti's intention
- Satyamurti uses the visual imagery of a picture’s “frame” or “edges” to represent two things:
- The physical frame of a picture
- The way that people choose to interpret pictures
- She uses the imagery of the frame to criticise people who only want to be reassured:
- She is a war photographer, so most of her pictures are “tragic” or “absurd”
- But people interpret them as they want, rejecting tragic pictures and accepting happier ones
- Thus, they can gain “reassurance”, because they can choose what to believe
- The war photographer knows that this is not “how things are”, because a picture is only a moment in time:
- The reality surrounding that moment may not be a positive one
- This is especially true of pictures taken in war zones, like the one later in the poem
Lines 9–12
“– as when at Ascot once
I took a pair of peach, sun-gilded girls
rolling, silk-crumpled, on the grass
in champagne giggles”
Explanation
- The speaker remembers a picture she took at Ascot:
- The two girls in the picture are healthy and suntanned
- They are wearing silk and drinking champagne
- This implies that they are wealthy and enjoy a life of luxury
- They are rolling about on the grass, crumpling their silk dresses:
- This suggests that they are privileged enough not to care about ruining their expensive clothes
Satyamurti's intention
- The girls in the picture represent carefree happiness:
- They are either ignorant of the tragedy in the world, or do not care
- This stanza reinforces the ideas in the first stanza:
- People would rather believe in the truth of this picture, because it is happy
- However, the imagery in this stanza contrasts with the later images in the poem:
- Satyamurti is illustrating the fact that some people enjoy wealth and luxury, while others endure war and tragedy
Lines 13–16
“– as last week, when I followed a small girl
staggering down some devastated street,
hip thrust out under a baby’s weight.
She saw me seeing her; my finger pressed.”
Explanation
- In this stanza, the photographer remembers something that happened “last week”:
- The fact that the events she recalls are so recent implies that the situation she photographed is continuing
- She was following a “small girl”, who was “staggering down some devastated street”:
- The street is devastated by previous bombings
- The reason the girl was “staggering” is that she was carrying a baby, but was too small or weak to do so easily
- The vivid visual description of her “hip thrust out” conveys the baby’s weight, which almost unbalances her
- This emphasises her smallness and vulnerability
- The girl sees the photographer about to take a photo of her
Satyamurti's intention
- Satyamurti follows the previous scene of privileged young women giggling at Ascot with the scene of a young girl struggling to carry a baby in a devastated street:
- The young women are carefree, while the young girl has the responsibility of a baby, even though she is just a child herself
- The young women are enjoying a luxurious lifestyle, while the girl has to live in a ruined city
- This juxtaposition illustrates the injustice of inequality
- Some people enjoy champagne, while others struggle to survive
- The speaker’s description of taking the photo allows readers to experience her reality:
- She does not help the girl because she is only there to record what she sees
- The emphasis on “seeing” reinforces the fact that seeing, or witnessing, is all she can do
- The reader becomes a witness who sees the situation from her point of view
Lines 17–21
“At the corner, the first bomb of the morning
shattered the stones.
Instinct prevailing, she dropped her burden
and, mouth too small for her dark scream,
began to run…”
Explanation
- When the girl reaches the corner, a bomb goes off, shattering the buildings around it:
- “the first bomb of the morning” implies that this is one of many bombs
- This suggests that the bombing of the city streets is constant
- The girl’s instinct to save herself takes over, and she drops the baby and runs:
- The fact that her mouth is “too small for her dark scream” conveys her terror and the volume of her scream
- It also emphasises how young and vulnerable she is
Satyamurti's intention
- The speaker shows the horror of conflict in unflinching detail:
- This reflects the war photographer’s role – she is there to record events
- However, it is left up to the reader to decide whether the baby survives or dies:
- The speaker has taken the picture just before the explosion and doesn’t describe the aftermath
- Satyamurti is prompting readers to make the same choices as people who look at pictures and decide what to believe
Lines 22–28
“The picture showed the little mother
the almost-smile. Their caption read
‘Even in hell the human spirit
triumphs over all.’
But hell, like heaven, is untidy,
its boundaries
arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall.”
Explanation
- The picture the speaker takes shows the young girl just before the explosion:
- She is described as a “little mother” because she was carrying the baby
- Her expression is an “almost smile” or half-smile, because she knows she is having her photo taken
- However, when the picture is published, the publishers print it with a caption that makes it seem like a positive picture:
- They focus on the bravery and goodness – the “human spirit” – of the young girl who is caring for a baby in the “hell” of a war zone
- “Their caption” suggests that the young girl is heroic
- This is undermined for the poem’s readers by the speaker’s previous description of what happened next
- By dropping the baby to save her own life, the girl shows desperation, not heroism
- The speaker returns to the imagery of the frame in her closing observation:
- She states that the “boundaries” of hell, just like those of heaven, are arbitrary
- This means that they are random and based on personal choice or preference
- The simile of those boundaries being as “arbitrary as a bloodstain on a wall” links them with the death and destruction that has taken place in reality
Satyamurti's intention
- Satyamurti wants to reveal the way that pictures can present a false image of reality, or allow people to deceive themselves:
- The picture does not show the girl’s terror or the baby’s death
- Instead, it looks as if the girl is smiling, which allows the publishers to mislead the public
- The speaker knows the truth, but she is implicated in the lie because she took the picture:
- However, she conveys her anger by distancing herself from “their” misleading caption
- She reveals the truth about war that the media fails to show
- The final three lines characterise the suffering of war as “arbitrary”:
- Some people enjoy the “heaven” of a life of luxury, while others endure the “hell” of living in a war zone
- The injustice of the “arbitrary” nature of war links back to the other injustices in the poem:
- For instance, the injustice of people choosing not to see reality, but comforting themselves by believing in happy interpretations of pictures
- Their actions are also “arbitrary”, because they are not driven by reason or reality
- Instead, they prefer not to see the tragedies of other people’s lives