This Means War: Conflict Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts

November 19, 2012 12:43 PM EST

“War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath,” is a huge, tough-minded and very moving new show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It lays out the ways cameras have been put to use during 165 years of world wars, undeclared hostilities and barely organized fang baring. Cameras turn out to be the transformer tools of warfare, adaptable as battlefield aids for reconnaissance and surveillance, as peerless instruments of propaganda and, above all, as a means to witness the atrocious facts of war. You may not be able to end war with a camera, but you can do a lot of useful things with one — even tell the truth.

Instead of being organized chronologically, the Houston show suggests that war is better considered as an eternally recurring narrative. It divides its story into chapters, from prewar buildup through postwar remembrances, with wars from all periods combined in each. The weaponry evolves from sabers to torpedoes to rocket-propelled grenades. (For the record, sharpened steel is forever.) The photo equipment changes from 19th century box cameras to cell phones and satellites. But the fundamentals of war — brutality and suffering, grief and self-sacrifice — don’t change much. They haven’t since the first time a caveman figured out how to use a rock.

The main problem for war photography today is image overload. The tidal wave of pictures all around us, with every cell phone adding to the deluge every day, threatens to make even atrocity photos into just more pictures, as morally weightless as the movie stills they so often resemble. For all that, the scores of unforgettable pictures in “War/Photography” make clear that even in a world that contains too many pictures, pictures of war, the best ones, still have the power to stir your emotions. They may not be able to compel any particular judgment about the wars they represent, but they can insist that attention must be paid. After that, if photos by themselves can’t stop war — and they can’t — then the fault is not in our pictures but in ourselves.

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston until Feb. 3 and will then move to Los Angeles, Washington and Brooklyn.

Richard Lacayo is an art critic and editor-at-large at TIME.

A journalist climbs out of the hole where toppled dictator Saddam Hussein was captured in Ad Dawr. Iraq’s defeated leader raised his arms out of his “rat hole” and said he was Saddam Hussein and that he wanted to negotiate. Iraq, December 15, 2003Yuri Kozyrev—NOOR for TIME

Baltermants - Attack--Easte.JPG — Attack—Eastern Front WWII, 1941Dmitri Baltermants—Russianphoto Association/Razumberg Emil Anasovich, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

A Georgian man cries as he holds the body of his relative after a bombardment in Gori — Zaza Rasmadze holds the body of his brother, Zviadi, following the bombardment of Gori, Georgia, August 9, 2008Gleb Garanich—Reuters, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Flying Military Class, 2010Damon Winter—The New York Times, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Huet - Body of an American.JPG — The body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is raised up to an evacuation helicopter, Vietnam, 1966Henri Huet—AP, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Astrada - Congolese Women.JPG — Congolese women fleeing to Goma, 2008. From the series *Rape as Weapon of War in DRC*Walter Astrada, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

van Agtmael - Darien Wiscon.JPG — Darien, Wisconsin, October 22, 2007Peter van Agtmael—Magnum, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Bar-Am - Return from Entebb.JPG — The Return from Entebbe, Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel, 1976 From the series *Promised Land*Micha Bar-Am—Magnum, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Torgovnik - Valentine.JPG — Valentine with her daughters Amelie and Inez, Rwanda From the series *Intended Consequences*, 2006Jonathan Torgovnik, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

January - USCG Cutter Spenc.JPG — American USCG Cutter Spencer destroys Nazi Sub, April 17, 1943Warrant Photographer Jess W. January, USCGR, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Palu - OJ Orjuela.JPG — U.S. Machine Gunner Sgt. Carolos "OJ" Orjuela, age 31, Garmsir District, Helmand Provice, Afghanistan From project: Home Front, 2008Louie Palu, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Huet - Delta du Mekong.JPG — Mekong Delta, September 1968Henri Huet—AP, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Barnes - Embarkation of HMA.JPG — Embarkation of HMAT Ajana, Melbourne, July 8, 1916Josiah Barnes, Australian War Memorial, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Schwartz - Hold the Phone.JPG — *Hold The Phone* Two Marine wiremen on Iwo Jima race across an open field, under heavy enemy fire to establish field telephone contact with the front lines, February 19, 1945Joseph Schwartz, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Press photographers behind an overturned car take pictures as Palestinians hurl stones at Israeli troops during clashes at the start of the second intifada on the outskirts of the West Bank, City of Ramallah, Palestine, October 16, 2000David Silverman—Getty Images, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

This Means War: A Look at Conflict Photography

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