Frontlines

de Sean Smith

Working both independently and embedded with the U.S. and British militaries, Sean Smith has compiled a shocking and unique portrait of modern combat and its aftermath. These pictures take us right into the midst of contemporary war zones and offer a unique insight into the reality of life in the crossfire. Frontlines begins with violence on the streets of Bethlehem in 2000 as Palestinian youths clash with Israeli soldiers. Smith catches fascinating glimpses of life in Afghanistan before the U.S. - led invasion as well as the faltering attempts of Afghan police and the U.S. military to maintain a fragile peace in the face of Taliban insurgency. He takes us into the utter devastation of Lebanon in the wake of Israel's brutal bombardment in 2006. And in Kiwanja in the Congo, thousands of refugees struggle on the edge of survival and civilian bodies litter the streets amid bitter clashes between the government and Tutsi renegades. But it is to Iraq, the most divisive of conflict of modern times, that Smith's work most often returns. He shows us a society nervously holding itself together under the shadow of U.S. assault in 2002. The images follow a crescendo of violence building through the Sunni uprisings of 2007 and the consequent surge as the U.S. army attempts to regain control over an increasingly desperate and violent rebellion. Smith's pictures are both a vivid contemporary document and a worthy contribution to the great tradition of war photography, laying bare the reality of modern conflict with a clarity that is impossible to ignore.