Janet McAllister: Beauty highlights the ugliness of war

Afghanistan, the Perils of Freedomby Stephen Dupont. Photo / Supplied

Beauty and war are not two concepts you'd usually link together, unless you're Mars, God of War, or perhaps Donald Rumsfeld. Yet in the work of Stephen Dupont - adamantly an "anti-war photographer" - both war and beauty are apparent.

In the gritty-glam world of the war correspondent, Dupont is the Real Deal. Over the past 21 years, the Sydneysider has covered conflicts in Sri Lanka, Angola, Somalia and the Rwandan genocide. He has a slew of prestigious awards and stories of brushes with death and he even looks the part: camo jacket, olive checked scarf and roll-your-own ciggies.

The beauty of his mostly black-and-white images depicting civilians and soldiers comes from their exquisite composition and stunning use of light. This is apparent in AK Generation, a "film" montage of his 1993-2009 Afghanistan photographs, which he showed at Auckland Art Gallery last Sunday, and which he'll show again tonight at the Image Nation photography industry conference at Unitec.

How and why does one make good-looking photographs about war which make war itself look bad? High artistic quality is one way Dupont hopes to make those jaded and desensitised by images of war sit up and take notice again. For him, unlike many in the art world, beauty isn't to do with convention or decoration, but with heightened emotion.

"When people are deeply moved by what they're seeing, that's the greatest compliment," he says.

Children figure in his work as symbols of innocence, seen in front of burning buildings, or crossing the paths of soldiers searching house to house for the enemy. And his polaroid portraits of solemn, weary, intensely gazing Afghans who have suffered decades of trauma with more to come (reminiscent of National Geographic's famous 1985 Afghan girl cover) "say so much more about the war than the blood, guts and action which I also show".

The Auckland Festival of Photography visitor promotes his work as art as well as photojournalism. That way, longer-term projects and books are more easily organised and funded, and he gets more creative control over how his work is presented: art objects are treated with more respect than news photographs - they don't get cropped or rearranged.

Institutions are also blurring the lines between art and photojournalism: the Auckland Art Gallery is also showing Te Papa's Brian Brake exhibition - both it and Dupont's talk would have fitted into the Auckland Museum's programme at least as easily.

So what turns high-quality photojournalism into art? Dupont thinks it depends more on the presentation of the work than on the work itself - is it being shown in an art gallery or in a news magazine? But others might argue that the tradition the photographer is engaging with is more important - is the work informed by the work of other artists, or other photojournalists?

Dupont also makes handcrafted photography books as art objects. There is no doubting his honesty and sincerity in wanting to illuminate otherwise hidden tragedies, and of course he needs to earn a living. Yet I am made uneasy by the thought of an object costing thousands of dollars on some collector's coffee table, showing beautiful pictures of beautiful poor people with violent, unbeautiful lives.

Dupont says he trusts his audience to not just be looking for picturesque poverty. I hope he's right; I hope we're not.


For more information

stephendupont.com

photographyfestival.org.nz

imagenation.co.nz