The Camera Kills Twice

snap-shot, n. 1. a. Hunting. A quick or hurried shot taken without dilerate aim, esp. one at rising bird or quickly moving animal. - Oxford English Dictionary

The camera is a weapon like any other: "ready, set, fire," as the film DDR/DDR formulated, is not unlike "lights, camera, action." In both cases the scene is controlled with a profound aesthetic militancy: the shooter and the photographer strategically place themselves in relation to their prey; then, after the proper calibrations are set via tracer rounds or test shots, the target is framed and fired upon. The volley, the mortar, the snapshot, consumes the target and absorbs his form. History, in an instant, is both constituted and frozen. After such a reflection, one is prone to recall the words of Eddie Adams, photographer of the Pulitzer prize winning photo Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém: "still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world...The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera." Photography, like writing (Qui plume a, guerre a, said Voltaire), as Adams alluded, is simply war by other means: the photo's narrativity killed the General, and the General killed the Viet Cong — but it was Adams who dealt the Viet Cong his second death, his narrative-death. Indeed, he who photographs, makes war. The camera kills twice.

ABOVE: Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém on February 1, 1968 by Eddie Adams

ABOVE: James Nachtwey in action.

LEFT: Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936 by Robert Capa; RIGHT: Robert Capa

LEFT: An American soldier killed by German snipers, Leipzig, Germany, April 18, 1945 by Robert Capa; RIGHT: Rio Segre, Aragon front (near Fraga), Spain, November 7, 1938 by Robert Capa

ABOVE: The lynching of nineteen-year-old Elias Clayton, nineteen-year-old Elmer Jackson, and twenty-year-old Isaac McGhie. June 15, 1920, Duluth, Minnesota.