Compositional Analysis

Compositional Analysis

 

 

Compositional Analysis 

The power of James Nachtwey’s “Mourning a soldier killed by Serbs and buried in what was once a football field” (Bosnia, 1993) lies in the grave pictured to the left and the fresh dirt around it, in what seems to be an attempt to highlight the raw and sudden nature of death, especially during wartime. Several photographic techniques illustrate this power, including depth of field, spatial relations, vectors of attention, and cropping. Together, these strategies invoke specific emotions and thoughts within the viewer. Every aspect of the photograph plays a part in telling the viewer the story Nachtwey envisioned when taking it. 

Regarding spatial relations: Nachtwey’s proximity to the grieving men and the soldier’s grave creates a feeling of shared pain or sympathy, putting the thought in the viewer’s subconscious mind that this could be them mourning their family member. The camera is level with the subjects, which allows the viewer to feel equal to them and put themselves in their shoes. This equality with the subjects greatly strengthens the emotional message; however, the two men are in the center of the photo which would be weak positioning if they were intended to be the power. Several aspects function to distract from the middle section once the viewer moves on from it, such as Nachtwey positioning the mounds of dirt rising up on either side of the photo, allowing them to be always present in the peripheral no matter where the viewer’s eye rests, keeping the graves in the viewer’s mind regardless of where they are looking. The constant presence of the graves keeps the viewer focused on the themes of mourning and death while simultaneously drawing them away from the center of the photograph They also serve to highlight the casualties of war. 

Despite these details, one could argue the power of this photograph still lies in the middle of the page and the pair of men there; However, once you process this section you realize all of the vectors of attention, such as the leftmost man’s arm or his eye line, lead us to the grave. Your eyes may settle on the middle for a moment, drawn in by Nachtwey’s precise timing in capturing this moment of mourning but they will inevitably move to the grave and the details of it: the fresh dirt, the nameless marker, and the proximity to many other similar graves. While the power of the photo may not reside in the middle, the details there serve a purpose beyond being vectors. The two men have contrasting light and shadow elements around and on them, creating a morbid feeling but also retaining an essence of harsh reality. These emotional responses combine to send the message of death being painful and raw, but also reinforcing it as an inevitability. The viewer sees the mourners and knows that with the passage of time, or perhaps a tragic event, they will eventually experience that grief for themselves. The lighting allows the viewer to peer at the darkness but not sink into it, which is a deliberate choice by Nachtwey, as he knows people can only view so much suffering before shutting down. 

The need to break away from suffering leads the viewer back to the power of the photo. The grave in the left corner is still a depiction of pain, but it is pain that has passed already. Processing pain that has ended, at least in regards to the soldier who is buried, is much easier than processing the raw and ongoing grief of the two mourners, which is the essence of the image’s power. The photograph showcases pain no matter where the viewer looks, but Nachtwey’s photographic techniques give the viewer’s eye, and mind, a place to go and process one kind of pain by absorbing another. In this way, the message of the photo is constant and unavoidable.

Once the eye moves past the power and back upwards following the grave marker vector, the eye is drawn to the background despite it being out of focus. Here is where Nachtwey’s use of cropping comes into play. The cropping of the photo lets the viewer see the numerous other graves stretching back but doesn’t allow the end to be seen. Lack of a visible boundary causes the mind to assume the burial ground goes on for longer and the sheer number of visible graves adds to this effect. The resulting feeling is one of vastness in the graveyard which strengthens the sense of immeasurable loss. Another aspect that heightens the effect is the title of the photograph, which tells us this burial ground used to be a football field. Though this detail seems small, it is actually very powerful as it causes the viewer to envision a large football field full of graves, which builds upon the power of the photo.

To conclude, James Nachtwey used many photographic techniques to produce a photo that conveys a somber message of death and mourning. This message serves to highlight the cost of war and the weight of grief. Viewers are taken on a complex emotional journey simply by looking at the photograph, which is the goal of visual rhetoric, and of artists like Nachtwey.