Phantom fury series#

I then imagined myself in the place of an Iraqi, seeing these soldiers of a country as powerful as it is culturally distant, coming to impose democracy upon me. I also realised that anyone could be nice on a Monday and become one of the worst assholes on a Tuesday. I saw the unbearable arrogance of the victor over the defeated. I always try to avoid making judgements a priori, but that day I saw and photographed the brutality of the war face-on. At that moment I hated these soldiers, whereas the day before I had empathy for them, for these young people lost in a hostile country. They were just normal, working or middle class men from normal places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, or Mexicans who had come to this hell in exchange for papers, and who already forgotten why they were in Iraq. This gesture, throwing the bodies of one’s enemies like garbage, represents the culmination of contempt and dehumanization. All the dead were foreign fighters, Yemenis, Syrians and Sudanese. I can still hear the sound of bodies crashing to the ground. But by then it was already long time after the battle, so the image’s impact was lessened.

Except when, months later, the great Mexican newspaper Reforma did.

No newspaper wanted to publish this image.

Phantom fury series#

How important is that one image within the series you made in the battle? You said to me once that you are never neutral, and you don’t believe those who claim to be… What did you want this image to say about the battle, or indeed the wider war? One image that became very widely known from the series is that of bodies being thrown from a rooftop by Marines. Despite unlimited technical means, once on the ground, in the middle of a hostile city, fear is the same for all men. Such a display of force is very impressive, the dull roll of artillery, then the silence, the shots in the night, soldiers waking up screaming, thinking themselves under attack. I have been working in Iraq since 2003, but it was the first time I had the opportunity to be embedded with US forces. Specifically, talking about Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury was the first major military offensive I had witnessed that closely. To put it more simply, I am fascinated by propaganda, and wars are moments in history when propaganda is at its strongest and most obvious. Being present for major events, I can witness at the same time “ le champs et le contre champ” of ongoing history. I am more interested in the understanding of history and by the gap between events and the way they are depicted in the media, that storytelling. I was comparing my experience of conflicts with photographers who were embedded for months on the front line during World War II, for example. You have said previously that you don’t consider yourself a ‘war photographer’, that you don’t spend enough time in conflict zones to really experience war in the way some do… This time in Fallujah must have been very intense – how does it fit into or reflect that view?Įven though I have been in dozens of conflict areas in the past 15 years, I do not consider myself a “war photographer”. Warning: The following article contains graphic images which some readers may find upsetting. Here, on the 15 th anniversary of the battle’s start, the photographer discusses the work he made over that week, his changing feelings about the men he was photographing, and one particular image which represents “the culmination of contempt and dehumanization” that grows in those at war. Jérôme Sessini was in Fallujah embedded with US Marines of Charlie Company, at work in the north eastern sector of the city for one week. The fighting in the city has since been recognized by many as the most intense urban warfare since the battle of Huế city during the Vietnam War. The US-led effort against insurgents in the city was code-named Operation Phantom Fury, and marked the first instance of Coalition military action against a purely insurgent force, since the toppling of the Ba-athist government in 2003. The Second Battle of Fallujah started on November 7, 2004, and lasted one and a half months – ending just before Christmas Eve.