War photographer

• War Photographer


  A poem by Carol Ann Duffy about a war photographer contemplating his job whilst developing photos
• Darkroom


  The setting where the war photographer is developing his photos. It is described as calm but sombre.
• Conflict zones mentioned


  • Belfast
  • Beirut
  • Phnom Penh
• Photographer's reaction


  Relieved to be in England away from the threat of violence
• Photographer's role


  Expresses a sense of vocation in documenting the suffering of his subjects
• Photographer's photos


  Only affect the reader momentarily
• Photographer's return to conflict zone


  Reflects the futility of his work as the English people remain indifferent
• The poem ends with the photographer staring "impassively" out the window of an aeroplane, reflecting on the indifference of the English people
• War Photographer


  A poem by Carol Ann Duffy about a war photographer contemplating his job whilst developing photos
• Carol Ann Duffy


  The UK's Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019. She is friends with two famous war photographers hence why she is interested in the difficulties and responsibilities posed by their role.
• In his darkroom he is finally alone: 'with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows. The only light is red and softly glows, as though this were a church and he a priest preparing to intone a Mass.'
• Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.
• Solutions slop in trays

  Beneath his hands, which did not tremble then though seem to now.
• Rural England


  Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel, to fields which don't explode beneath the feet of running children in a nightmare heat.
• Something is happening


  A stranger's features faintly start to twist before his eyes, a half-formed ghost.
• A hundred agonies in black-and-white from which his editor will pick out five or six for Sunday's supplement.
• The reader's eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.


  From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where he earns his living and they do not care.
• Rigid form


  • Duffy uses a tight form of six lines per stanza as well as a constant ABBCDD rhyme scheme. This rigidity of the form is at odds with the chaos caused by conflict and perhaps reflects the order of "rural England".
• Cyclic structure


  • The poem ends by describing the photographer returning to the warzone he came from on "the aeroplane". This cyclical structure creates a sense of futile repetition and continuation of past mistakes and acts as evidence that the photographer's work has not changed anything.
• Internal conflict


  The photographer seems to be struggling with reconciling his life in "rural England". He is only capable of viewing "rural England" through the comparative lens of conflict.