Telling tales

Please notice: this is a layman's post. If you read it please don't skip any notes.
Also: before you decide what to think of my writings: please read through my latest post (plead added 03/06/2014).

This is the second of two photos of this scene/situation. The other is in my previous post 'The mortar tails of Homs'. Both photos by Lens Young Homsi .

(wording edited on December 23, 2012. Plead added june 3, 2014).
Some of the material in my last post 'The mortar tails of Homs' brought C.J. Chivers, war correspondent at The New York Times, to bring up a particular aspect of dealing with photographic material from war zones.

In the blog-post 'Revolutionary Art: The Mortar Tail Booms of Homs' he shares some of his knowledge, of parties in wars, using photography to communicate their situation to the surrounding world. The main point of the post is to differentiate between photography used to document conditions through existing motives, and photography where the motives have been arranged to enable the photographer - the revolutionary artist so to speak - to deliver or enhance a certain message. As his title indicates, he finds, that the drawing-scene photo series, which makes up the major part of the post, belongs to this second category. He also add, that among photos of ordnance scrap, those are of the less usual kind. And that they work.

I have seen fare too little to have an opinion of the photos being unusual, but I do agree, that they belong in the art category. At least in part. Actually, I was certain, that "tail" was also the way to spell "tale", and the idea was, through that, to let the title indicate, that an unknown amount of fiction was to be expected. That was a mistake on my part, so thanks to Chivers for bringing that to attention, and please keep in mind, that - to a varying degree - this might also apply, when looking at a few more photos, I wanted to share, but wasn't able to fit in to the last post:

A sculptural arrangement of ordnance fragements on a kitchen counter. Holding the orange: a tail fragment from a 240 mm mortar round. Photo by Lens Young Homsi.

Efforts to maintain a level of social and cultural activity - and an obvious concern for the children to be able to enjoy life. The vase: a 120 mm mortar round without fuse and - hopefully - emptied of explosives. Photo from Syrian Revolution Memory Project.

 A crater that - in my opinion - could be from a 160 mm mortar shell (like what left the goal posts in the top most photo). The small holes in the white wall in the background could be made by potentially lethal fragments, all from that same shell. Photo by Lens Young Homsi with slight adjustment by me.

This perforated shutter tells the story of high explosive fragmentation shells in a different way.
Photo from Syrian Revolution Memory Project.

Al Hamidyeh Main Street. September 15, 2012 (according to poster). Photo by Lens Young Homsi.

related posts on this blog:

- The mortar tails of Homs 

- Mortar position, Homs

- Syria: Local photo sources.
 
*note: to write about motivation and main points of someone else's writings as if I know is a mistake (note added 03/06/2014).