The loudest shots from the war zone

Jon Swain on the photographers who risk their lives to capture the horrors of battle

The World Today Updated 6 November 2020 3 minute READ

Jon Swain

British journalist and writer

War photography is a tough trade. To be successful, photographers must experience for themselves the destructive forces that surface wherever blood and death run rife. They have to photograph the terrible things wars do to people and places, often at great personal risk. Through their images they want the world to know the miseries they have seen. Inevitably, the job sometimes entails the sacrifice of their lives.

The historic town of Bayeux in Normandy has a memorial park honouring every journalist killed since 1944. More than 2,100 names are engraved on its tall pillars of stone. Each year the list grows longer − a reminder of the price journalists pay for doing their job.

They hail from across the world, young and old, men and women. Although the majority were murdered in their own countries to silence their reporting, hundreds of them − especially photographers − were killed in war zones.

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