Today in class we read the poem ‘War Photographer’ by Carol Ann Duffy. To summarise, it depicts the terror and sorrow of war through the perspective of the photographer, who is reminded of the trauma as he develops his photos. Themes/feelings such as sorrow, human suffering, and human morality (questioning the photographer, as his job is to distance himself from humans

In this poem, Duffy creates a tension between the horrific war setting that the photographer experienced and the safety and calmness of rural England, where the photographer is from :

“Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel, to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet of running children in nightmare heat”

The ‘pains’ of living in rural England are seen as minor and temporary to be reduced to bad weather, unlike the pains he witnessed during the war : death and fatality. This contrast is not only effective in describing the degree to which the war has impacted the photographer, but also, how the profoundness of the war has been reduced to a digestible size for the public:

“A hundred agonies in black and white from which the editor will pick out five or six for Sunday’s supplement”

The juxtaposing effect of ‘hundred’ and ‘five or six’ really exemplify how much the bigger picture has been shrunk for the sake of society, which the photographer begins to realise, is somewhat unjust, how the his career is dependent on this very suffering that the public aren’t exposed to, as though they must avoid contaminating the happiness and safety of daily life with the raw and violent nature of war.