Battlefields

Throughout his forty-year career, Yan Morvan has put his own life on the line to capture the realities of life in the midst of violence, from Northern Ireland to Afghanistan. But as one scene of devastation succeeded another, he came to question the purpose of this work. "War photography is just pornography," he told one interviewer. "It doesn't change anything."

So he resolved to undertake a different kind of battlefield photography, one that would show how war ran like a jagged scar through all of human history, and left scars on the landscape as well. Traveling the globe, he sought out the scenes of history's most important battles, meticulously positioning his 8 10 Deardorff view camera to capture the perspective of the common soldier on the front lines.

The end result of his decade-long quest is this monumental volume, presenting 430 images from 250 historical battlefields. The earliest is the semihistorical Battle of Jericho, recorded in the Book of Joshua; the most recent is Sirte, site of the final battle of the Libyan Civil War in 2011. In between are the battlegrounds of the Persian Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, the World Wars, the Vietnam War, and many others. The text includes a concise written account of each battle, as well as an extensive interview with the photographer.

This book is a staggering work of art, an important historical documents, and a memorial to all those who have fought and died on the battlefield.