If
I had to choose the most important
photograph shot in the 21st cen-
tury, it may just be the opening image
for this article (pages 20-21), shot by
the Pulitzer Prize-winning photogra-
pher Lynsey Addario during one of her
assignments in Iraq.
In the caption, you learn the photo-
graph depicts an Iraqi woman desper-
ately 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 com-
pletely 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.
And the longer you look, the
stranger things get. For me, if you lookat the image long enough, she almost
becomes an optical illusion, turning
into negative space. And, for me, in
that Rorschach-like watercolor blot of a
portrait, Addario records a miraculous
apparition, which transforms into a
figurative black hole that seems to pull
everything toward it—history, politics,
culture, religion, war, humanity and
hope—and into its black void.
In a way, the photograph changes
from being a very specific narrative of
a woman’s quest to find her husband
in Iraq to an ominous, visually abstract
metaphor of war, chaos and collapse.22 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com