The New Manichaeism in Pandemic Conflict Photography
Intubated 2 Weeks © Karen Cunnigham
In the early weeks of quarantine in New York City, grocery stores and bodegas were running out of stock for meat and cans. Week after week, they adjusted, and, if we forget for a moment, the remote work and isolation begins to feel normal. People still gather in parks and open streets, but the rhetoric of war is ubiquitous in our news and pandemic briefings. It’s a war we feel when we hear a siren, when someone isn’t wearing a mask, and when the city is so abnormally empty it looks like millions have died. It’s a war we bring into our homes when we compulsively wash our hands and door knobs.
For years, conflict photographers have documented the devastation when people’s families are torn apart, when their homes are destroyed, or when they swim to another country. With the coronavirus, this loss is so private, it’s invisible even to victims’ family members. Homes aren’t destroyed but lost, the dead cannot be seen, and fighting doesn’t happen on a battlefield, but in a hospital.
© Francesco Bellina
Lucy Blaire and Lucia Vasquez have photographed a new normal of flour shortages, a full home life, and empty streets. It’s photography that reflects our day-to-day life in quarantine, one that exists in a liminal space. It barely remains in our old world and toes the line with a dystopian universe. These strange sights stay grounded in our reality, but anxiety about what the future holds translates to tension that remains for the viewer. Their work captures the uneasiness we still feel when we go outside.
Photographers like Karen Cunnigham and Francesco Bellina call upon the black-and-white themes of traditional conflict photography that evokes the work of Robert Capa and Dan McCullen. Purposeful grayscale photography has always been meant to focus on the tragedy of the subject and pull back the aestheticism. In the pandemic, the monochrome still focuses on the loss of life and severity, but, by chance, there’s a uniformity in theme. The personal protective gear that essential health care workers wear contrasts starkly with dark body bags and city streets. The dichotomy of color forms a universal manichaeism color symbolism, and its bluntness feels more grounded and tragic than color pandemic photography.
Bandaging Facial Pressure Ulcers © Karen Cunnigham
This new type of conflict photography is an attempt to process an invisible warfare against this devastating pandemic. Normal color photography has failed to express the severity of coronavirus, but monochrome images of coronavirus victims have made an international language of fighting for life.
© Francesco Bellina
