Existing comment:
Despite the fact that Zelma and Larrabee were covering different phases and battlegrounds in World War II, and that they were of different genders, political backgrounds and nationalities, they similarly both presented the Allied forces as the morally just side. The heroes and ordinary people depicted are Soviet, French, Italian, South African and American. The only dead troops pictured are Germans, who are not only the enemy, but presented as morally evil. Warfare is treated unequivocally as an ethically justified, honorable act, and some degree of government control of the media message is assumed on both sides. Much of this compliance with official policy would change for U.S. photographers during the Vietnam War, an unpopular, ethically ambiguous war fought in a non-Western country. Maintaining objectivity as a witness to history versus creating a politically propagandizing image remains an issue for photojournalists today.
Zelma and Larrabee’s images are not well-known as part of our collective, historical memory of World War II. This blank slate of familiarity and expectations about these artists gives current viewers the opportunity to make their own judgments about quality, point of view, and significance as photojournalists. Both cover six-month segments of a much longer, complex, world war. Zelma adheres to conventional war photography standards, conveying the violence, destruction and death that defines the battlefield. Larrabee brings a humanistic, perhaps female, gaze to the theater of war, showing the civilian aftermath, quiet interludes, and the jubilation of liberation. |