War Photographer (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

‘War Photographer’

Each poetry anthology in the GCSE contains 15 poems, and in the poetry question in the exam you will be given one poem on the paper – printed in full – and asked to compare this given poem to one other from the anthology. As this is a “closed book” exam, you will not have access to the other poems, so you will have to know them very well from memory. Fifteen poems is a lot to learn. However, understanding four things about each poem will enable you to produce a top-mark response:

• The meaning of the poem and the story it tells 

• The ideas and messages the poet wanted to convey

• How the poet uses poetic techniques to convey their ideas and messages

• How these ideas compare and contrast with the ideas and themes of other poems in the anthology

Below is a guide to Carole Satyamurti’s 'War Photographer', from the Conflict anthology. It includes:

• Overview: a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations

• Writer’s methods: an exploration of the poet’s techniques and methods

• Context: an exploration of the context of the poem, relevant to its themes

• What to compare it to: ideas about which poems to compare it to in the exam

The poem has been taken from Pearson Edexcel’s poetry anthology, the full version of which can be found here.

Overview

In order to answer an essay question on any poem, it is essential that you understand what it is about. This section includes:

• The poem in a nutshell

• An explanation of the poem, line-by-line

• A commentary of each of these lines, outlining Satyamurti's intention and message

'War Photographer' in a nutshell

'War Photographer' is partly set in a fictional urban war zone that reflects many of the armed conflicts of the 1980s. The poem is a dramatic monologue, in which the speaker, a war photographer, analyses the moral implications of creating images that can create a false representation of war. The speaker compares a pair of photographs she has taken; one is of a laughing pair of privileged young women and one is of a young girl carrying a baby. The second image is taken in the moment before a bomb explodes. However, when the photograph is published, the caption presents it as a hopeful image. Satyamurti criticises the way that pictures can tell an untrue story, and people’s unwillingness to engage with the truth.

'War Photographer' breakdown

Lines 1–8

“The reassurance of the frame is flexible 

– you can think that just outside it 

people eat, sleep, love normally

while I seek out the tragic, the absurd, 

to make a subject. 

Or if the picture’s such as lifts the heart 

the firmness of the edges can convince you 

this is how things are”

Explanation

• The edges of a picture, its “frame”, can be interpreted in different ways

• The frame can safely contain the picture, separating it from reality:

  • This allows people to believe that everything outside the frame is fine, and that people’s lives are unaffected

• They don’t see what the war photographer sees when she takes the picture:

  • She looks for tragic and absurd images and experiences them personally

  • Therefore, she knows the reality of what is outside the frame

• However, if the picture is a happy one, people can convince themselves that it is a true representation of life:

  • They choose to see the picture’s “edges” as solid, with nothing disturbing going on beyond them, so they can convince themselves that “this is how things are”

Satyamurti's intention

• Satyamurti uses the visual imagery of a picture’s “frame” or “edges” to represent two things:

  • The physical frame of a picture

  • The way that people choose to interpret pictures

• She uses the imagery of the frame to criticise people who only want to be reassured:

  • She is a war photographer, so most of her pictures are “tragic” or “absurd”

  • But people interpret them as they want, rejecting tragic pictures and accepting happier ones

  • Thus, they can gain “reassurance”, because they can choose what to believe

• The war photographer knows that this is not “how things are”, because a picture is only a moment in time:

  • The reality surrounding that moment may not be a positive one

  • This is especially true of pictures taken in war zones, like the one later in the poem

Lines 9–12

“– as when at Ascot once

I took a pair of peach, sun-gilded girls 

rolling, silk-crumpled, on the grass 

in champagne giggles” 

Explanation

• The speaker remembers a picture she took at Ascot:

  • The two girls in the picture are healthy and suntanned

  • They are wearing silk and drinking champagne

  • This implies that they are wealthy and enjoy a life of luxury

• They are rolling about on the grass, crumpling their silk dresses:

  • This suggests that they are privileged enough not to care about ruining their expensive clothes

Satyamurti's intention

• The girls in the picture represent carefree happiness:

  • They are either ignorant of the tragedy in the world, or do not care

• This stanza reinforces the ideas in the first stanza:

  • People would rather believe in the truth of this picture, because it is happy

• However, the imagery in this stanza contrasts with the later images in the poem:

  • Satyamurti is illustrating the fact that some people enjoy wealth and luxury, while others endure war and tragedy

Lines 13–16

“– as last week, when I followed a small girl 

staggering down some devastated street, 

hip thrust out under a baby’s weight. 

She saw me seeing her; my finger pressed.”

Explanation

• In this stanza, the photographer remembers something that happened “last week”:

  • The fact that the events she recalls are so recent implies that the situation she photographed is continuing

• She was following a “small girl”, who was “staggering down some devastated street”:

  • The street is devastated by previous bombings

  • The reason the girl was “staggering” is that she was carrying a baby, but was too small or weak to do so easily

  • The vivid visual description of her “hip thrust out” conveys the baby’s weight, which almost unbalances her

  • This emphasises her smallness and vulnerability

• The girl sees the photographer about to take a photo of her

Satyamurti's intention

• Satyamurti follows the previous scene of privileged young women giggling at Ascot with the scene of a young girl struggling to carry a baby in a devastated street:

  • The young women are carefree, while the young girl has the responsibility of a baby, even though she is just a child herself

  • The young women are enjoying a luxurious lifestyle, while the girl has to live in a ruined city

  • This juxtaposition illustrates the injustice of inequality

  • Some people enjoy champagne, while others struggle to survive  

• The speaker’s description of taking the photo allows readers to experience her reality:

  • She does not help the girl because she is only there to record what she sees

  • The emphasis on “seeing” reinforces the fact that seeing, or witnessing, is all she can do

  • The reader becomes a witness who sees the situation from her point of view

Lines 17–21

“At the corner, the first bomb of the morning 

shattered the stones. 

Instinct prevailing, she dropped her burden 

and, mouth too small for her dark scream, 

began to run…”

Explanation

• When the girl reaches the corner, a bomb goes off, shattering the buildings around it:

  • “the first bomb of the morning” implies that this is one of many bombs

  • This suggests that the bombing of the city streets is constant

• The girl’s instinct to save herself takes over, and she drops the baby and runs:

  • The fact that her mouth is “too small for her dark scream” conveys her terror and the volume of her scream

  • It also emphasises how young and vulnerable she is

Satyamurti's intention

• The speaker shows the horror of conflict in unflinching detail:

  • This reflects the war photographer’s role – she is there to record events

• However, it is left up to the reader to decide whether the baby survives or dies:

  • The speaker has taken the picture just before the explosion and doesn’t describe the aftermath

• Satyamurti is prompting readers to make the same choices as people who look at pictures and decide what to believe

Lines 22–28

“The picture showed the little mother 

the almost-smile. Their caption read 

‘Even in hell the human spirit 

triumphs over all.’ 

But hell, like heaven, is untidy, 

its boundaries 

arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall.”

Explanation

• The picture the speaker takes shows the young girl just before the explosion:

  • She is described as a “little mother” because she was carrying the baby 

  • Her expression is an “almost smile” or half-smile, because she knows she is having her photo taken

• However, when the picture is published, the publishers print it with a caption that makes it seem like a positive picture:

  • They focus on the bravery and goodness – the “human spirit” – of the young girl who is caring for a baby in the “hell” of a war zone

  • “Their caption” suggests that the young girl is heroic

  • This is undermined for the poem’s readers by the speaker’s previous description of what happened next

  • By dropping the baby to save her own life, the girl shows desperation, not heroism

• The speaker returns to the imagery of the frame in her closing observation:

  • She states that the “boundaries” of hell, just like those of heaven, are arbitrary

  • This means that they are random and based on personal choice or preference

  • The simile of those boundaries being as “arbitrary as a bloodstain on a wall” links them with the death and destruction that has taken place in reality

Satyamurti's intention

• Satyamurti wants to reveal the way that pictures can present a false image of reality, or allow people to deceive themselves:

  • The picture does not show the girl’s terror or the baby’s death

  • Instead, it looks as if the girl is smiling, which allows the publishers to mislead the public

• The speaker knows the truth, but she is implicated in the lie because she took the picture:

  • However, she conveys her anger by distancing herself from “their” misleading caption

  • She reveals the truth about war that the media fails to show

• The final three lines characterise the suffering of war as “arbitrary”: 

  • Some people enjoy the “heaven” of a life of luxury, while others endure the “hell” of living in a war zone

• The injustice of the “arbitrary” nature of war links back to the other injustices in the poem:

  • For instance, the injustice of people choosing not to see reality, but comforting themselves by believing in happy interpretations of pictures

  • Their actions are also “arbitrary”, because they are not driven by reason or reality

  • Instead, they prefer not to see the tragedies of other people’s lives

Writer’s methods

This section is split into three separate areas: form, structure and language. You should demonstrate your understanding of the poem by linking these technical areas of Satyamurti's writing together. Think about how Satyamurti's language, structure and form contribute to her ideas and message in 'War Photographer'. 

You will gain far more marks by focusing on Satyamurti's themes than on individual poetic techniques. Therefore, the analysis in the following sections is arranged by theme, and examines the intentions behind Satyamurti's decisions about:

• Form

• Structure

• Language

Form

'War Photographer' is a dramatic monologue that narrates the experience of a photographer in a war zone. The first-person speaker addresses the unseen listener directly, which makes it feel as though the reader is being addressed directly, too. The poem is written in free verse, with no regular rhythm or rhyme scheme. This reflects the speaker’s train of thought as she makes connections between one subject and another. 

Structure

The poem begins with a metaphor about the way in which the frame or edges of a picture allow people to interpret them as they choose. It then moves into the past tense to juxtapose two scenarios: one at a racing event in England, then one in a war zone in a foreign country. The fourth stanza describes a horrific scene when a bomb explodes in the city where the speaker is taking photographs. The final stanza describes what happened to the picture the speaker took just before the bomb went off. The structure is cyclical, with the final stanza linking back to the first stanza’s critique of the way pictures can be misinterpreted. Satyamurti uses simile to convey the true horror of what the picture represents and enjambment to mimic the speaker’s train of thought and to emphasise certain words and phrases.

Language

Satyamurti uses a range of language techniques to alter the tone of the poem around the subject that the speaker is narrating. The sounds of the language also contribute to the contrast and the connections between the comforting and the tragic pictures the speaker discusses.

Context

Context can offer important insights into the poem, but avoid using random pieces of information about Satyamurti or her historical context. Aim to combine contextual information with your analysis of the poem's themes to demonstrate your understanding of Satyamurti’s ideas and message. In 'War Photographer', the main focus is on the representation and horror of war, so this section is bullet-pointed under the following themes: 

• The representation of war

• The horror of conflict

The representation of war

• Carole Satyamurti (1939–2019) was a British poet, sociologist and translator

• She taught at the University of East London and the Tavistock Clinic:

  • Her work in both places focused on the stories people tell about themselves

  • She used ideas from psychoanalysis to understand people’s stories

• Satyamurti’s interest in psychoanalysis can be seen in her presentation of her speaker’s experience in ‘War Photographer’:

  • Although the speaker’s tone is precise and observational, the language she uses is often emotive and evocative

  • Satyamurti reveals the feelings beneath the surface of the speaker’s account, just like psychoanalysis aims to reveal a person’s subconscious feelings

  • In the same way, she reveals the truth beneath the surface of the picture

• War photographers photograph armed conflicts and their effects on people and places:

  • They often work in very dangerous situations, and are sometimes injured or killed in the process of taking photographs

• The tradition of war photography is that war photographers should be neutral observers:

  • That means they should not influence what they are photographing

  • This is shown in ‘War Photographer’ when the speaker doesn’t help the girl or the baby 

• Journalists and photographers who work in areas of conflict are protected by international law:

  • However, they are sometimes targeted by combatants to prevent photographic evidence being shared publicly in the media

  • In ‘War Photographer’, the facts are misrepresented by the media, creating a further level of injustice in the conflict

The horror of conflict

• Satyamurti’s poetry often deals with painful subjects in a very direct way:

  • Her subjects include cancer, death and war

  • One of her main themes is the fragility of human life

  • Her poems also address the way that suffering affects people as individuals 

  • ‘War Photographer’ therefore combines many of her interests as a poet

• When ‘War Photographer’ was written in 1987, several major wars and conflicts were going on in the world:

  • One of these was the Iran-Iraq war of 1980–1988

  • The Soviet-Afghan War of 1979–1989 was also in progress

  • The Lebanon War of 1982 happened just before Satyamurti wrote ‘War Photographer’

• Satyamurti was aware that, while the UK was not involved in any wars at the time, people in other countries were experiencing terrible suffering:

  • Instead of presenting a poem about war in general, she chose to present war from the perspective of a war photographer

  • The details seen by the war photographer reveal the individual suffering caused by war and conflict

What to compare it to

In your exam, you will be asked to compare the ideas and themes explored in two of your anthology poems. That means it’s a good idea to revise pairs of poems together, in order to understand how each poet presents their ideas about conflict. This will enable you to write a thorough analysis of their similarities and differences. In 'War Photographer', Satyamurti's main themes are the representation of war and the horror of conflict, so the following comparisons would be a good starting point:

• 'War Photographer' and 'What Were They Like?’

• 'War Photographer' and 'Belfast Confetti’ 

For each pair of poems, you will find:

• The comparison in a nutshell

• Similarities between the ideas presented in each poem

• Differences between the ideas presented in each poem

• Evidence and analysis of these similarities and differences

'War Photographer' and ‘What Were They Like?'

Comparison in a nutshell:

These poems give you the opportunity to compare two different approaches to the way that conflict is represented. Satyamurti focuses on how conflict can be misrepresented, while Levertov depicts the representation of a war after it has happened. Both poems explore the way that truth can be distorted or concealed, and each poet uses both similar and different techniques to get their message across.

Similarities:

Differences:

'War Photographer' and 'Belfast Confetti'

Comparison in a nutshell:

Both poems explore their speakers’ experiences of conflict as witnesses who have been involved in a violent event. Both poems address the horror of the violence they witness and the way that ordinary life is torn apart by conflict. Both are angry poems, but while Carson focuses on the immediate effects of violent conflict on his speaker, Satyamurti’s poem addresses the misrepresentation of the horror of war.  

Similarities:

Differences: