Steve Mumford is an artist who has travelled to Iraq on 3 separate occasions to make drawings and paintings. The first time he went by himself, and hung out in the streets of Baghdad and lived in a hotel.
His journals, paintings, and drawings are on artnet.com, click here. The images are also available in a book, click here.
Steve Mumford succeeds in introducing what I think is most missing from discussions about the war in the media, he puts a human face on both soldiers and Iraqis. Which I think is the greatest service, to make empathy possible and restore some humanity to the situation.
I haven't written much about it, but I was a soldier in Afghanistan. The news I saw on tv while I was there felt like a political parody of reality, and people from both sides of the political spectrum were actively twisting the truth to tell the stories that they wanted to manufacture. Part of the reason is that it is hard to get to the truth, and you would have to expose yourself to danger, and people are complicated.
Steve Mumford does a great and uncommon service.
4 comments:
Wow...I just got sucked into his stories about patrols in Baghdad...his work is great...I like the monochomatic ones the best...the color is nice to look at but seems off, too colorful or too dull. So much can't be conveyed. Listening to him talk about grenades going off and it is easy to cost on by without knowing how fucking LOUD they are...how the adreneline pumps when the explosions and shooting starts...
Great Post Bill, thanks
What are you talking about? real people were being torn apart by the grenades.
Listen, this Mumford guy is essentially an apologist for Bush, who put our soldiers in harm's way and killed about a million Iraqis. For what? oil? ArtNet should be ashamed for publishing it in the first place and for leaving up now.
What on Earth are you talking about? Real people were getting torn apart by those grenades.
This Mumford guy went to Iraq and essentially became an apologist for Bush's crimes -- putting our soldiers in harm's way and killing a lot of Iraqis. Being a painter is no excuse: what he wrote contributed to legitimizing this war. ArtNet should be ashamed for publishing this crap.
Teddy V, I don't know who you are, and I don't know if you were/are a soldier or someone who has experience in Iraq or Afghanistan. So I can't decisively call you out on your (non-argument) statement. Because one: Steve Mumford is not an apologist and if you had read his stuff you would understand that. He says some very critical stuff about some soldiers who do things he thinks are fucked up. Steve's writing and drawing rings very true to me, and I have been there. For an artist to go into Iraq and take a nuetral point of view, and just call it like he sees it is a substantial move, a credit to our society and a god damned brave thing to do. That is what makes it a humanist action, the bravery and the willing to be nuetral and make the Americans and the Iraqis both come across as individuals and people. I get the distinct impression that you have not been there, and that you do not have firsthand knowledge because you are guilty of doing what the white house does: talking in absolute statements, not being able to distinguish the gray areas and finer points of an argument is a burden you will have to bear for the rest of your life. I was a soldier and I think the war in Iraq is unfortunate, but because I served as a soldier in Afghanistan on a Provincial Reconstruction Team I can say with authority that American soldiers do a lot of good and that a lot of people in Afghanistan like us, and that many people in Afghnistan have benefited from us being there: like the thousands of refuges that moved to Pakistan when the Taliban took over and that have now moved back to their homes. Also we have built schools, medical clinics, hospitals, water wells, roads, set up governmental infrastructure, and allowed for the first democratically elected government in the 3000 year history of the country. I saw grade school aged females going to school for the first time EVER in that country, but you probably don't care about that because you are more concerned about being angry at politicians then something amazing and special happening that is a credit to America and our culture of generosity. I served on the night patrols during the election, and there was a huge international effort to help the Afghanis pull it off, and conversly there were foreign fighters there from all over the middle east and former soviet satelite states hoping to disrupt the election so that they could continue the tyranny that Afghanistan had been subject to for at least 30 years under the Russians and then the Taliban: like music being illegal, women being unable to own property, no television, no political opposition to the ruling theocracy. I think you are hopelessly uniformed, but it is not your fault because you probably get your news from the major dis-information networks like CNN, NBC, ABC, and FOX. I invite you to disprove me without quoting the mainstream media, and if you use some firsthand sources I will be impressed.
Post a Comment