STOCKPORT .- War is Only Half the Story is a ten-year retrospective of the work of the groundbreaking documentary photography program, The Aftermath Project, which Sara Terry founded in 2008 to support post-conflict storytelling by some of the world's finest photographers. To mark its 10th anniversary, The Aftermath Project will publish a special volume (the ninth in its acclaimed book program) featuring the work of over 50 photographers from 15 countries that have been winners and finalists in the Aftermath Project's yearly grant competition from 2008-2016.
These outstanding photojournalists, among them Nina Berman, Andrea Bruce, Jim Goldberg, Stanley Greene, Jessica Hines, Carlos Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Javier Ortiz, David Monteleone, Andrew Stanbridge, and Danny Wilcox Frazier, are committed to telling the other half of the story of conflict -- the story of what it takes for individuals to learn to live again, to rebuild destroyed lives and homes, to restore civil societies, to address the lingering wounds of war while struggling to create new avenues for peace.
Terry writes about the anniversary book's unique concept: " ... we decided on a fresh approach to the conversation. Instead of a chronological overview of the decade of work that we have supported, designer Teun van der Heijden and I drew on two poems by Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska ... Using her post-conflict verbal imagery, we created five themes for the book, and then edited from across our rich archives of 53 grant winners and finalists. With Symborska's words to guide us ... we let the images speak to each other ... I believe we've created a dialogue that's never been heard before, a post-conflict visual symphony, one that invites you to listen over and over again."
War is Only Half the Story includes an introduction by Sara Terry, two poems by Wislawa Szymborska, "The End and the Beginning" and "Reality Demands," and insightful texts by photographer Donald Weber and American literary critic and translator Clare Cavanagh that provide further context for the project.
In his essay "What Remains," Weber writes: "Photography's allure is its spectral ability to provide a creative retrieval of history of past encounters, and offer a counter-testimonial to the historical narratives into which they had previously been written ... For ten years now, The Aftermath Project has recognized this question of the remainder, and has provided a necessary forum for culture and creativity to allow society to better understand historical trauma."
In her analysis of the post-conflict work of Wislawa Szymborska and the connection between poetry and photography, Cavanagh writes: "Poems and photographs alike are often charged with attempting to stop time, to isolate single instants from the inevitable temporal sequence that surrounds and drives them. The poem, like the photo it describes, suggests other possibilities for both media. A moment removed from time's motion invites us to consider disasters, and their aftermaths differently."
ara Terry is a documentary photographer and filmmaker, and a Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. The Aftermath Project is an outcome of Terry's five-year-long project, Aftermath: Bosnia's Long Road to Peace, about the aftermath of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She completed her work in 2005, convinced that a broader public understanding and discussion of aftermath issues was crucial in a world where the media regularly covers war, but rarely covers the stories that follow the aftermath of violence and destruction. Terry founded The Aftermath Project as a way to help photographers tell these crucial stories.
Teun van der Heijden is an award-winning photo book designer and editor who has produced such works as Black Passport with Stanley Greene, Diamond Matters by Kadir van Lohuizen, Interrogations by Donald Weber, and Everyday Africa: 30 Photographers Re-Picturing a Continent (multiple photographers).
Donald Weber is a photographer whose work deals with the transformations of history through narrative. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and two-time Finalist of The Aftermath Project. He is a senior lecturer in the Bachelor and Master programs of photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, The Netherlands.
Clare Cavanagh is Frances Hooper Chair of Arts and Humanities and Chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. She has translated the poetry of Wisława Szymborska and Adam Zagajewski.
Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012) received international recognition when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. In awarding the prize, the Academy praised her "poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality." Collections of her poems that have been translated into English include People on a Bridge (1990), View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995), and Monologue of a Dog (2005).
