BagNews Archives About Staff BagNews is a progressive site dedicated to visual politics and the analysis of news images.
Friday, May 25, 2012

Twitter

@bagnewsnotes »
Advertisement



June 10, 2011

Dover Finale?

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Perhaps not all-of-a-sudden, we get this “more momentous” shoot from Dover standing out from the steady stream of tarmac images. Might the scale and theater here embody raised hopes of a possible end game in Iraq and Afghanistan, conjuring a curtain call from the closing cast?

Maybe though, the  photo’s dramatic impact is less elaborate or wishful than that — just America dying for a wind down.

(caption: Dover Air Force Base, Del. — Transfer cases containing the remains of, from left, Army Pfc. Michael C. Olivieri of Chicago; Pfc. Christopher B. Fishbeck of Victorville, Calif.,; Pfc. Michael B. Cook of Middletown, Ohio; and Emilio J. Campo Jr. of Madelia, Minn., wait inside an Air Force C-5 cargo plane after their arrival in the U.S. The soldiers died in support of Operation New Dawn in Iraq, the Pentagon said.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/fseaman Frank LeBaron Seaman

    The propaganda of patriotism and war is Big Business personified.

  • http://twitter.com/weldonberger Weldon Berger

    Alternatively, you could read it as a “were these lives lost for nothing?” rebuke to all the people who are carping about the financial cost of the wars. I’m pretty sure that’s how people who want to keep the Taps turned on would see it. And I read just a few days ago that Bob Gates says the light at the end of the tunnel shows a corner that can be turned in, say, six months. 

    A straight-faced Gates on turning the corner:
    http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=64198

  • acm

    there’s something strange about the lighting and placement of people vs. coffins/flags that makes this look like a carnival shooting gallery — all 2-dimensional and surreal..