Photo: LIBYA. BENGHAZI. March 2, 2011. 15:30:56. The now destroyed nasser statue, constructed in honor of the former egyptian president.
Who goes to war—and why? It’s a daunting reality, one that people around the world face, over and over again, their stories disappearing in the wind. We know only so much, and so we rely on the people who survived to pass on knowledge, to record the facts, a staggering responsibility few undertake. But there are those who use the camera to document the visible world so that at the very least we may glimpse the cold hand of death sweeping across the land like a machine. It’s hard. Numbness is the first consequence. Nothing is real anymore, nothing besides survival itself.
Also: Go On the Set of “Roots” With Photographer Kareem Black
LIBYA. BIN JAWAD. March 6, 2011. 16:05:59. Revolutionaries head toward the front line, to the east of Bin Jawad. FROM THE BOOK “LIBYAN SUGAR.”
In the prologue, Brown writes, “There was a mysterious attraction to Libya, a country largely closed to the world, and an identification with Arab Spring values, what the media was calling freedom and democracy. It was an identification with those values that carried me as an American, perhaps as it had inspired the freedom fighters of the Revolutionary War, those in the fight against slavery during the Civil War, of against the fascism and plight of the Jewish people during the Second World War. Libya is not my country, nor was it my revolution. I did not go to change anything, but there was a sense that I could so something if I went, and I went for myself.”
Truly a millennial approach, and one bearing the heavy overlay of ideology that enjoys a privileged perspective. But such is the American ethos to its very core, its faith in its self-as-center that finds itself continuously in the mix. It is from this vantage point that Brown guides us through the many circles of Hell, in photographs and in words collected from emails, Skype sessions, and journal entries.
LIBYA. BENGHAZI. March 1, 2011. 17:43:53. Learning antiaircraft weaponry at a captured government army base.
Brown includes a Skype session from the day photojournalist Tim Hetherington was killed, recounting his visit to the hospital in words and photos. It is the truth in its most raw, unadulterated form. No one is safe. If Libyan Sugar says one thing it is: this could be you. There could be a Revolution. Arab Spring is not the only fever to burn. War may very well be the only place the human race is sure to return.
LIBYA. TRIPOLI. GRAFFITI IN ALGERIA SQUARE. September 19, 2011. 10:59:33.
Perhaps because—we never learn. Looking through Libyan Sugar, a strange understanding takes hold. There are those who will be shocked, disgusted, outraged, upset. There are those who will be numb, inactive, depressed. And then there are those who will be thrilled, excited, engaged. There will be those looking for justification to rationalize the carnage. To call it gruesome would be polite, but the shocking reality is that war is as Brown concludes in the final image in the book, a screenshot of a Skype session where he wrote:
“and i will not start talking about what i’m doing here but i will say that it has been important because it is about the limits and if i would never test my limits i would never have been secure you know this, it[s part of why i used to be so frustrated and now i can tell you that i’ve been to that place i needed to go its given me confidence, more awareness, brought me closer to myself.”
LIBYA. OUTSKIRTS OF BENGHAZI. October 23, 2011. 13:11:32. Taken from a commercial airplane.
All photos: © Michael Christopher Brown/Magnum Photos, from Libyan Sugar (Twin Palms).
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
