The eye of war

The Eye of War is a chronicle of the changing face of conflict as recorded by the men and women who went to the front and captured on film, or in words, the experience of battle. From the Crimean War, the American Civil War, through two world wars, Vietnam and the two recent Gulf Wars to the Balkans and beyond, photographers have been drawn to the battlefront. Just as warfare has been transformed by technology, so have the cameras that document the watching, the waiting, the heat of battle, or the bloody aftermath; weapons have become more deadly whilst the camera has become smaller, quicker, sharper. The best photographs distil the chaos of war into visual icons that haunt the mind. This book selects 200 of the most powerful, together with poignant first-hand descriptions by battlefield witnesses, to make an outstanding visual record. The great war photographers of each era are represented, including Robert Capa, W. Eugene Smith and Yevgeny Khaldei, all active in the Second World War; Don McCullin and Larry Burrows in Vietnam, and, currently, James Nachtwey. The vastness of the Pacific vies with the empty steppes of Russia in 1942, the squalor of the 1914-18 trenches with that of street fighting and innocent civilian casualties, particularly in more recent wars.