In conversation with:War photographer Ben Brody

“The doctrine was to photograph the war in a way that justified its existence and exaggerated its accomplishments. The visual doctrine wasn’t codified, but it was enforced“

These are the words of Ben Brody, a former U.S. Army combat photographer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Embedded within military ranks, Brody captured thousands of images that, today, still remain the property of the Pentagon. In 2012, grappling with his enlistment, Brody published Attention Servicemember, a searing elegy about his experiences of war.  Written from an intensely personal perspective, at a glance, this book's framework seems unconventional. Photographs scattered without caption or context and unsequential passages that read as streams of consciousness. This fragmented picture of war Brody's intentions reflects its elusive nature, capturing the disorientating and erratic trauma of soldiers' experience, often bypassed in literature. In conversation with Brody, I gained insight into his view on war and his instrumental role as a “propagandist”. Instructed to follow a set of unwritten guidelines on what to photograph of the war in the form of a “Visual Doctrine”.

Embedding in Iraq

In 2003, due to the severity of the political climate in Iraq, the embedding system became de facto for journalists. Attached to a military unit, this protection allowed journalists to venture further afield. This decision was often pragmatic, as Brody revealed the reality of “photographing in Baghdad at night unembedded, that’s suicidal”. Brody’s position put him in close contact with embedded journalists, where he witnessed how the intellectual underpinnings of this system intended to “manipulate journalists into creating positive stories about the military by sharing the experience of hardship, risk and deprivation with the soldiers themselves and that this proximity and intimacy would create bounds of affection”. As a result, the peripheral imagery that emerged from Iraq in the early years was a heavily sympathised Anglo-American view. As a military photographer, Brody was under strict directives to make military propaganda for press releases. Where the visual doctrine:“ to photograph the war in a way that justifies its existence and exaggerates our accomplishments” was the primary objective.

The hyper-militarised lens

When war is photographed with a military agenda, it is traditionally presented through a hyper-militarised angle, focusing on technological advancements within warfare and soldiers in combat. Brody reflects on the doctrine that instructed photographers to “capture the bombs, the helicopters, in all their ravenous beauty”—a directive emphasising the sheer force and sophistication of military hardware while ignoring the destructive aftermath of this warfare. This method of presentation glorifies the machinery of war, excluding images of civilian casualties, exhausted or traumatised soldiers and the widespread devastation that these technologies create.

Such imagery functions as a form of propaganda designed to bolster public support for military actions and maintain morale among the military and civilian population. By highlighting the advanced weaponry, the precision strikes, and the “ravenous beauty” of these technological marvels, the military portrays a narrative of controlled, efficient violence that suggests war is a clean, strategic endeavour. The message is clear: the military is in command, the technology is advanced, and success is inevitable. This sanitisation creates an illusion of war as a battle of progress and efficiency, where the violence is almost clinical in its execution, and the consequences are rarely shown.

This narrative also serves to justify military actions by presenting war as a necessary, even heroic, pursuit of national interests. By excluding images of human suffering and focusing on technological superiority, the military apparatus constructs a vision of warfare as a rational, necessary force of advancement. The public is thus shielded from the moral and emotional weight of war, which helps to foster a sense of acceptance or even pride in the military's role in shaping global geopolitics.

The trope of civilian: Perpetrator or Victim

In alignment with the doctrine when, Iraqis were often framed within one of two paradigms: as perpetrators or as victims needing American intervention. In one striking image, an American soldier escorts an Iraqi man out of a building, armed and masked, with comrades forming a protective perimeter. The image reinforces the narrative of the American soldier as a protector and hero, while the Iraqi man’s identity is reduced to that of a possible threat. Brody later revealed the reality behind such images to “Photograph the men being captured as though they were dangerous militants when really, they were just Sunni and targeted for sectarian reasons by the Iraqi Police”.

Depersonalisation and Concealment

The sanitisation of war extended to its most brutal realities. Brody recalls being directed not to photograph the obscenity of what bombs did to human bodies. Instead, suffering was obscured, creating a detachment between the viewer and the realities of war. In one haunting image, a human body lies under a sheet, crawling with bugs. Only a limp arm, adorned with a wedding ring, protrudes from the sheet. While the photograph hints at the consequences of war, it stops short of revealing the full extent of its horrors.

Similarly, Brody’s image of rows of bodies wrapped in plastic bags underscores this concealment. The anonymity of the dead—depersonalised and sanitised—aligns with the U.S. military’s refusal to conduct or release body counts. General Tommy Franks famously declared in 2002, “We don’t do body counts.” By February 2020, the Iraq Body Count project had documented over 207,759 Iraqi civilian deaths. These figures remained invisible in the official narrative, hinted at only through the absences in Brody’s photographs.

A Disillusioned Perspective

Reflecting on his work, Brody grapples with his role as a “propagandist”. He describes the frustration of photographing within the confines of the military’s visual scope. In his 2019 book Attention Servicemember, Brody pairs his images with a critical elegy of his experiences, exposing the orchestration behind the war’s imagery. “We didn’t help the Iraqi people,” he admits, countering the “Winning Hearts and Minds” rhetoric employed to justify the invasion.

Brody’s disillusionment echoes the sentiments of other embedded photographers who found their perspectives shaped by proximity to the military. Photographer Peter van Agtmael notes, “So much of the attention was focused on the Americans, and yet, in human terms, they played a small part.” This limited viewpoint prevented deeper engagement with the lives and experiences of Iraqis, reinforcing an “us vs. them” mentality.

Ben Brody’s reflections on the visual doctrine of the Iraq War highlight the role of photography in constructing narratives that justify military interventions. By controlling what was seen and omitted, the U.S. military shaped public perceptions of the war, amplifying themes of heroism and professionalism while concealing the realities of suffering and destruction. Brody’s work stands as both a testament to the power of imagery and a critique of its manipulation, challenging us to look beyond the official gaze and question the narratives we accept as truth.