The Eye of War

From the Crimean War and American Civil War through two World Wars, from Vietnam and the Gulf War to the Balkans and beyond, photographers have been drawn to the battlefront. The best war photography bares the essence of war by distilling the chaos of combat into indelible visual icons. The camera was part of the technological revolution that started to transform warfare in the middle of the 19th century. As weapons have become more deadly, cameras have kept pace, getting smaller, quicker, longer ranged. This volume includes 200 of the most powerful war photographs: unforgettable images like Alexander Gardner's of the Civil War dead after Antietam in 1862, still the bloodiest day in American history; Robert Capa's, Margaret Bourke White's and Yevgeni Khaldei's of the Second World War; or Don McCullin's and Larry Burrows' of Vietnam. Accompanying the images are compelling eyewitness accounts of the experience of war from war correspondents and from combatants, recorded in diaries, memoirs and letters.