Documenting The Human Condition In The Age Of Constant Aggression

If I had to choose the most important photograph shot in the 21st century, it may just be the opening image for this article (pages 20-21), shot by the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Lynsey Addario during one of her assignments in Iraq.

In the caption, you learn the photograph depicts an Iraqi woman desperately looking to find her husband after a massive fire took place at a liquid gas factory in Basra, Iraq. But for me, there’s much more taking place, both visually and metaphorically, in this nightmarish shot, which packs so much about our world into the frame…and into a single image.

Right off the bat, you instantly sense a world turned on its head from the slanted horizon line. The main figure’s identity, though, is literarily shrouded, like so many women in that part of the world, by a burka-like garb that completely abstracts her form and identity, with the exception of her shoes. Those are what anchor the figure in the frame. So we sense the figure of a woman, but we’re unsure of who she is.