Bruce Haley's "Tao of War Photography"

<p>50 maxims that were learned the hard way: http://brucehaleypictures.com/#/Tao%20of%20War%20Photography/</p>

<p>And you can see his portfolio here: http://brucehaleypictures.com/</p>

<p>Which shows that unlike a lot of other people, he knows what he is talking about.</p>

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<p>War is terrible. It is crap.</p>

<p>Maybe someday I'll get the nerve to look at the photos I took when I was in combat in Vietnam. They aren't as good as these but my situations were perhaps different than this person making the photos. It's been forty years. I bought a scanner. Maybe it's time. Just not yet.</p>

<p>When I came back I visited with my Uncle who fought during WWII and was captured by the Germans and escaped. He said to me, "I will never forget the look on the eyes of the first solder I killed."<br>

War is not fun. It's not pretty. It's glamorized by many who haven't/didn't participate.</p>

 

<p>WOW, I don't really know what to say. The photography is impressive. To impressive where it truly tells of an awful story.<br>

Thanks for sharing.</p>

<p>After looking through Mr. Haley’s portfolio, all I can say is what unholy shit we do to each other and our planet in the name of power and God.</p>

<p>I cannot imagine what it is to be Bruce Haley. To willingly bear the weight of obviously such a deep and what must be a costly love with the world we have made and to remain an unrelentingly honest witness to what he has experienced.</p>

<p>Haley's photographs make me really think and I hope they will haunt me for a long time.</p>

<p>Ellis, You summed up much of my thought that I could not put into words.</p>

<p>Thanks for the post! The real deal!</p>

<p>Back in 1960 I was posted to Taiwan(Formosa). I went as a pilot not a photographer. When I got there I was assigned to stay in downtown Tainan in the Marco Polo hostel. You dared not touch the slimy walls in the shower. I was asked whether I wanted a room on the sixth floor with the bats, or on the fifth floor with the rats. I chose the rats. I awoke the first night at about three staring into the face of a rather large rat who, as it turned out, was more afraid of me than I was of him but just barely. The next day I moved to the sixth floor. Nothing like stepping in bat guano in your bare feet. This is to say, in a much lesser way, I do understand a little of Bruce Haley's fascination with the way much of the less fortunate world lives, although like Gunga Din, he is a far better man than I am. Later, I saw my war from the cockpit of an airplane. War is much easier that way. You can fly back to Thailand and sleep soundly sans rats. I still have a strong fascination with those less fortunate and violent parts of the world. Haley's photographs are superb and serve a very high purpose. They tell a story that needs to be told over and over again. Maybe if some of those important politicians who have never even seen those nether parts of the world nor have ever served had seen what Bruce Haley has seen they would have restrained that false, insular and arrogant bravado that sent so many of our bestand most dedicated off to die and be maimed.</p>

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<p>Very powerful..what to say, he and his work speaks for itself.</p>

<p>Riveting. </p>

<p>The Burma executions series is little more than a low speed snuff film. You have to be a sick bastard and a terrible coward to photograph a man being killed like that without doing anything about it. And NO, I don't think those photographs will do anything to stop killings like that one from happening. There was a person there at the moment who could have tried to stop it, but he was more interested in playing with his camera. Bruce Haley should lose his credentials as a Human Being.</p>

<p>J Sevigny: How long do you think he would have lasted if he had tried to stop the execution? 30 seconds, maybe? Would he have saved the victim? Would we have learned about what happened there without him then?<br>

Without men and women like Haley, we would never have had the chance to do something about the situation. The real sorrow is how little <b><i>we</i></b> actually did about it. I take it you moved to stop that kind of thing, which is going on right now? Did you march, contact your congressman, etc? I didn't, and I suspect you didn't either. What Haley did is allow us the chance to do so, and made it our responsibility. It is we who stand by and watch, not Haley, who I greatly admire. Thank him and the countless others who forced our politicians to (belatedly) stop the war in Vietnam and intervene in Rwanda, Kosovo, and all other hellholes where humans like us were motivated to act to stop or reduce such atrocities as a result of knowledge delivered by these messengers.</p>

<p>My own activism, which has a long history, does not include taking pictures of people being brutally murdered.<br>

I know there are a great number of documentary photography fans who feel that the gorier and nastier it is, the closer it is to truth, but that's b.s. The best artists in the history of photography have not had to stoop to slaughterhouse-style photographs to make a point.<br>

I'm not going to repeat my previous argument but I will pose some questions for those of you who defend this kind of inhumane, disrespectful nonsense.<br>

1) If it were you, your brother, your father, your sister or your child being macheted to death, would you defend this human pig named Haley?<br>

2) If these photographs were of White Americans, would your reactions be the same? Or is it that it's fine to take pictures of brown people far away being butchered but not Middle Americans?<br>

3) Isn't the fact that citizens Do Not react to profanely violent photojournalism proof in and of itself that this type of photography is pointless?<br>

4) If Haley is man enough to put himself in such a situation, shouldn't he be man enough to face the consequences of trying to halt a death? If he'd been killed trying to stop a murder, wouldn't he have brought far more attention to what you argue is repulsive to him?<br>

5) Are those of you who support this kind of work incapable of understanding the implications of words like "murder" without being shown a photograph?<br>

6) You say that Haley's photographs, which for all intents and purposes went unpublished, make me responsible for taking political action against the situation which led to the executions he photographed. Are you serious? He was there. He was responsible, under every moral code in human history, for taking action and he had the ability to do so. In the United States he could be charged with associated homicide.<br>

The issue is that we have this falsely humanistic dandy traveling around taking pictures of People being terribly mutilated in order to make a buck or a reputation. It's a cheap and sick way to build a professional reputation. I think we all know the truth. This sick man is a small step removed from serial killers who photograph their victims. The fact that he feels no natural instinct to step in and Do Something about what he photographs is proof that he's a sociopath. No normal person would stand by and watch while a killing happened. Only a sick son of a b.... would photograph it. And he photographed what? A half dozen of these killings.<br>

Yes. Thank you, Haley, for showing us the difference between humanity driven documentary photography and that which is fueled by self-obsession and a culture that believes that Nothing, not even a man's terrible death, is off limits.</p>

<p>J Sevigny: I heard your points, and I disagree, strangely enough, with just abour every point you made. In fact, I even dare to say that all of my arguments stand. As for "brown people far away," I grew up with them, married one, and have children who are a darker beige than I. Do with that what you will.</p>