Seeking Light: Portraits of Humanitarian Action in War

by Paul Grabhorn

Overview

A profoundly moving collection of unforgettable photographs from conflict zones around the world

Paul Grabhorn’s stunning four-color photographs tell an amazing, essential story—one of hope in the face of violence and deplorable conditions, of dignity in the midst of degradation, of light in the darkness of war and suffering.

Taken on his travels with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Grabhorn's captivating images allow readers to witness the activities that occur every day in places that the rest of the world has forgotten or has chosen to ignore. In war-torn countries such as Chechnya, Bosnia, Croatia, and Somalia, the humanitarian work Grabhorn documents is a testament to human compassion and community. Here are the helpers, quietly working day to day to alleviate the suffering of those caught up in conflict wherever it erupts. In many parts of the world, hope may sometimes seem in short supply. Grabhorn’s photographs are an inspiring reminder of the resiliency and the unlimited capacity of the human spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698145726
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/02/2015
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	108 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

PAUL GRABHORN is a photographer and graphic designer. He has served three White House administrations, helping with their environmental and sustainable development initiatives, and has participated in numerous International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) photography trips and has photographed in Somalia, Costa Rica, Bosnia, Croatia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Chechnya, and many other places around the world. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

Bone-chilling cold seeped into the Land Cruiser as we drove fast down a road lined with high snowbanks. The snow had a purple twilight glow as night descended. In the headlights a policeman stood in the road, waving us down. It was impossible not to notice that we were riding in a Red Cross vehicle with the flag flying behind us and the insignia painted on all sides. Three delegates, an interpreter and I had been driving to villages and refugee camps in eastern Croatia all day. The policeman said there was an old woman alone in a house nearby and he was concerned she was very sick, or even worse, dying. Dianne Paul, one of the delegates, immediately asked to be taken to the woman’s house.

We followed the policeman and on entering the house found the woman in bed, buried under layers of blankets. The fire had gone out and with no heat, the house was the same temperature as outside, below 0ºF. She had not left the bed in days and was lying in excrement. Dianne gave the orders and soon the woman was on a stretcher and loaded into the Land Cruiser. We all squeezed in and drove her to the closest hospital. The admitting nurses were not happy to see the woman; they recognized her and said that they do not take in the indigent. Dianne explained in a heartfelt way how it was their duty to take her in, clean her up and give her a warm place for the night, which they did.

Dianne’s instinctive response showed me that when you are faced with someone in need and have the capacity to respond, then you must. This detour had nothing to do with our mission and everything to do with responding. Days before Dianne had said goodbye to her husband and two young boys back in the United States, whom she was leaving behind for three months. She had come to Croatia to help refugee children who’d fled the fighting and ethnic cleansing in Vukovar, Bosnia, and were dealing with the trauma of having their lives destroyed.

Every day people leave the comfort of their lives and homes to help others. When fighting erupts, humanitarian workers enter the conflict zones to make a difference in the lives of those in need. This book shows some of the humanitarian responses to armed conflict. It also tells the story of my personal journey traveling and photographing in intense places with subjects that became embedded in my soul.

Much of this book focuses on the time I spent documenting the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). I have tremendous respect and admiration for their work, their delegates and their staff. This respect has grown over the years as I have experienced life more deeply and broadly. The ICRC is the only organization with the mission of preserving the dignity of people affected by war and standing up for basic principles and rules of humanitarian law. These rules protect the needs of those who are wounded, hungry, without a home, without clean water, cut off from contact with family members, or those who laid down their weapons or were captured as prisoners of war. As long as humanity turns to armed conflict it must also respect the need for basic humanitarian responses to the suffering that is caused by that choice. War is not dignified, but there is dignity to be found and maintained within the hardship of war.

It is my hope that the images in these pages speak to you at a level of feeling beyond the mind’s reach. I also hope that you are called to act, in whatever way you are able, on behalf of others in need wherever you see them: at home, at work, on the street or out in a distant country somewhere. We all become humanitarians when we answer the call and act.

Working in Conflict

Beledweyne, Somalia. September 1992

The Calling

You never know when your life is going to change forever.

It was mid-August 1992, in Washington, D.C. Sunlight pounded in through the skylights and the glass wall of my second-story studio set in the back of a bricked courtyard in Georgetown. Looking west I could see the golden domed bank on the corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue. The thick summer air and its dripping heat were held at bay by the air conditioner that was working full bore. I sat down to read the Washington Post at the wooden dining table that doubled as a conference table in my small office.

I had stayed up most of the night before working on the layout of a report for the National Space Council and was almost late for a meeting to review the latest draft at the Old Executive Office Building. Yet I could not pull myself away from studying an article describing the situation in Somalia and a new effort to get relief supplies to the starving people there. Sitting freshly showered in a business suit with the AC cranking, it was impossible for me to picture the situation and the suffering in that distant desert land. Even so, my heart was pounding hard and I felt an indescribable sense of urgency; it was a feeling that was both exciting and frightening at the same time. I knew then that I must get to Somalia quickly and document the situation. This was something I’d never done before.

Two weeks later I found myself boarding a military cargo plane at Dover Air Force Base in Maryland bound for Mombasa, Kenya, via Ramstein, Germany, and Cairo, Egypt.

In my knapsack I carried one camera body, two lenses, seventy rolls of film and a pocket journal. I also lugged a duffel bag full of stuff I would mostly never touch.

In retrospect I can see that moment in August was a “calling.” I felt a mantle settle on my shoulders and the resulting effect was an amazing flow of events. In the next ten days I acquired a Kenya work visa, got the multiple vaccines recommended by the World Health Organization and convinced the public affairs office of CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) that I was a qualified journalist so that I was given space with the press pool on military transport. I also handed off a rapid brochure project I had been working on for the White House Council on Environmental Quality to my studio team, purchased a new camera lens and shot several test rolls (this was back in the predigital days of film and processing). Sheer naïveté and the energy of being thirty-five years old propelled me down this path after following the impulse that struck me reading the morning paper all those years ago.

Before I left Washington, I spent many hours learning about the Red Cross from Ann Stingle, the American Red Cross public affairs officer. She patiently explained the difference between the International Red Cross and the American Red Cross and described the situation on the ground in Somalia. She also explained why this was such a unique and important intervention.

There are three branches of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The International Committee of the Red Cross works in situations of armed conflict and violence. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) works before, during and after disasters and health emergencies. The National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, like the American Red Cross, act as auxiliaries to the public authorities of their own countries and occasionally work under the direction and coordination of the ICRC in conflict zones, such as in Somalia in 1992.

The ICRC is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and its mandate comes from the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC operates exclusively in places of conflict and violence around the world, providing relief from suffering to those who are affected. In Somalia, where there were hundreds of thousands of starving people due to the ongoing civil conflict, the ICRC was one of a handful of organizations that had the ability to move about the country. The usual method of providing food relief to such a large and disparate starving population was to bring in shiploads of food aid to an ocean port and then send convoys of trucks into the countryside. But now, convoys were being hijacked en route by armed bandits and warlords. Very little food was actually reaching the starving.

Editorial Reviews

2014-10-22
A photographic record, often moving while difficult to take in, of the humanitarian crises of the last quarter-century.Related to the Grabhorn family of fine printing fame, Grabhorn here documents the labors of the International Committee of the Red Cross, with which he has worked since 1992. "The ICRC," he writes, "is the only organization with the mission of preserving the dignity of people affected by war and standing up for basic principles and rules of humanitarian law." Presenting images mostly from Africa but also from the Balkans and parts of Asia and South America, Grabhorn details just what that work involves, with all the difficulties of protocol and diplomacy attendant. As he recalls of an operation in Somalia, for instance, American military planes used for convoying supplies had to accommodate unarmed personnel, while the ICRC had to allow an armed escort of the convoys. There are hopeful signs to be seen in the cornucopia of goods that the ICRC has been able to muster in its relief expeditions, as well as in the grateful faces of those served; these are tempered by the grimness of Grabhorn's photographs of such things as surgical operations in the field. The photographs, documentary in nature, seldom attain the luminousness of art, but some stand out above others: a Chechen soldier gazing with suspicious weariness into the lens; a page of handwritten Arabic script, threatened by Islamic fundamentalists, trembling in the desert wind there. The best of those images show that life goes on even in the face of horror, as Tuareg women sing and children in Sarajevo draw clean water. A more circumstantial text would have been welcome, but Grabhorn's photographs lend urgency to the ICRC's important missions.

Kirkus Reviews