War

Some of the most memorable photographs ever taken have been war images from the likes of Robert Capa, Don McCullin and W. Eugene Smith (to name some of my own heroes). The current conflict in the Middle East is also producing some outstanding photography, in spite of the obvious preference of the US media for images that glorify the combat and the combatants.

The capacity of an image to move a viewer greatly exceeds that of words, written or spoken. Yet today I found a quotation that seems to me to express perfectly the futility of war, a quotation that deserves to be displayed alongside the most telling images.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

- Jeannette Rankin