In Times of War and Peace

Thông tin sách: In Times of War and Peace (Hardcover, 231 trang) – Abbeville Press, 1997. Ngôn ngữ: Tiếng Anh.

As photojournalists since the early 1980s, the Turnleys have covered most of the great conflicts of the past fifteen years, and have been published in the best-known newspapers and magazines. Very often, one of their photographs becomes the iconic representation of the event. This is a result of their spending extended periods in the regions they cover, getting to know the people and the way of life. During the three years David lived in South Africa, he showed apartheid as the prevailing system, its subsequent destruction, and the first elections of the new democratic state. Peter has pursued his interest in documenting the world's fourteen million refugees, and also photographed the fall of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Together they photographed student dissidents in the months leading up to the Tiananmen Square massacre; their photographs of the massacre itself are among their most recognizable. Shining through all the photographs is the strength of individual character and hope against powerful social and political conflict. Review
"From a low-income mixed race neighborhood in their hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, to the hotspots of the world made famous by news headlines—Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Israel's West Bank, Cape Town, Somalia, Bosnia, Chechnya—twin brothers David and Peter Turnley have focused their cameras with award-winning results. There are bloodied corpses, angry mobs, and ragtag bands of refugees depicted in this compilation of their pictures, but precious few of the brothers' subjects are anonymous. In the tradition of Robert Capa, they work from the frontlines, resulting in intimate photographs that haunt the viewer. Peter's human interest shots, taken in the Turnleys' adopted Paris, offer a soothing respite. While the brothers write copious notes on the images, their reflections are relegated to small print in the back of the book, ensuring that the accompanying text does not dilute the power of the visuals." —Amazon.com

"Through photographic eyes that never flinch, brothers David and Peter Turnley share with us the human spirit and the human condition made wretched by war in poor places. South Central Los Angeles in the fiery grip of rioters looks remarkably like chaotic Somalia. A Sarajevan wedding guarded by a best man with an AK-47 might be a funeral in Siberia. The people who populate so many of the Turnleys' photographs are wary?not of the camera, but of the worlds they live in gone mad. The quality and value of the images result from the Turnleys' decision to eschew gore and the bluntly horrific in favor of the silence and loneliness of lives lived in societies on the edge. The prize-winning photojournalists seem always ready for the moment when a great image emerges, and their work, as collected here, yields a memorable and valuable book. Highly recommended." —Library Journal About the Author David Turnley is a Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer and filmmaker. He has covered many of the major news stories of the past thirty years, producing several books out of these experiences. He lives in New York City.

Peter Turnley is renown for his photography of the realities of the human condition. His photographs have been featured on the cover of Newsweek 43 times and are published frequently in the world’s most prestigious publications. He has worked in over 90 countries and has witnessed most major stories of international geo-political and historic significance in the last thirty years.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. IN TIMES OF WAR AND PEACE

“Memory is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. What does it mean to remember? It is to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading and to call up the future to illuminate it. It is to revive fragments of existence, to rescue lost beings, to cast harsh light on faces and events, to drive back the sands that cover the surface of things, to combat oblivion and to reject death.”
from Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea

The documentary photograph is memory incarnate. Photography is a way of turning memory into images connecting the pat to the present. To that end, some photographers have stormed the world’s battlements to bring back photographs that testify to the chaos, disarray, death and destruction that man and Nature have wrought. In the process, they have produced a visual memoir that records history, stirs conscience and affects the collective psyche.

The history of the last decades before the millennium has been indelibly preserved by David and Peter Turnley, twins who share not only genes in common but also an ardent and intense commitment to discovery and enlightenment. Their assignments have taken them to seventy-five countries, many of them obscure with unfamiliar and recognizable names. Their photographs reflect their respect for the dignity of the individual, a compassionate solicitude for the plight of their subjects. They have succeeded in retaining their sanity and humanity in the face of repetitive obscenities that challenge imagination and desensitize normal emotions. Despite having been to hell and back, theirs is not an apocalyptic vision of the world. Though photographing a stormy and unsightly world, they often find oases of kindness and reverence for life that generates hope for the future of mankind. The nobility of their subjects often transcends the horror of the event.

Paris-based, the Turnley’s are nomadic beings responding to the demands of their news-driven careers. The glamour is elusive. The loneliness, overpowering. The pressure, unrelenting. The thrills, indefinable. Their working days are dictated by the amorphous, erratic, unpredictable flow of events and the relentless discipline of magazine and newspaper deadlines. Theirs is a subsistence existence in venues like Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Chechnya. They constantly stand on the edge of the precipice between life and death. They share much of the physical anguish and austere living conditions of the people they photograph.

These are not hit-and-run photojournalists, trading on shock and sensationalism. Throughout their careers they have stayed the course, often investing years in areas where they had the greatest contact and interest. David Turnley spent three years chronicling the inevitable destruction of South Africa’s apartheid system and the emergence of a democratic state in which black Africans voted for the first times in their lives. Peter Turnley has had a recurring interest in the plight of the fourteen million refugees wandering the globe and documented the decline and fall of the Communistic system in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years. Both spent a Beijing spring in Tiananmen Square recording the bold and heroic but fruitless struggle for democracy by China’s youthful dissidents that culminated in the June, 1989 massacre.

This exhibition is not only a testament to the devotion and ardor that suffuses the work of the Turnkeys. It also recognizes that without the support of two segments of the much-maligned media the depth and breadth of these coverage would not have been possible. The Detroit Free Press created a ground-breaking international roving photojournalist designation for David Turnley, previously assigned to cover breaking news events in Detroit, Michigan. Newsweek has provided the wherewithal and the original forum for the publication of Peter Turnley’s photographs based on a yearly contract for his services. The Black Star Agency has disseminated their work to newspapers and magazines throughout the world.

These photographs remind us that ours is still an imperfect world. The Turnleys are in the forefront of a legion of like-minded photojournalists who give voice to the silent, succor to the pained, and hope to the defiant. Their torch of concern shines like a beacon in the dark and distant corners of the world.