by Paolo Pellegrin, text by Scott Anderson
Trolley, London, 2007. 144 pp., 80 b&w tritone illustrations, 11¼x9½"

Paolo Pellegrin's work covering the July/August 2006 conflict in Lebanon helps cement his place as one of the best modern day war photographers, pushing the boundaries of photography and coverage of wars.

On assignment for the New York Times, Pellegrin and Anderson found themselves on the recieving end of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. Their car came under fire from a drone as they drove through Tyre, stranding them in Southern Lebanon for weeks. During this time, the two journalists covered the impact of the Israeli attacks on the Lebanese popution and the aftermath of the conflict, concentrating in particular on the city of Qana.

Pellegrin's photos convey as much information in the tone of the pictures as in the content. Fear, desperation, devastation, suffering, determination, isolation, death, hope. The emotional impact of the photos comes not just in the images of bombed out buildings and wounded civilians — what you expect in war photography — but in the way Pellegrin uses the frame of his camera. Stark, barren images of an empty city contrast with frames packed with chaos.

He smartly works within the confines of the four corners of the frame, pushing the boundaries of photography, delivering dark photos, creating layers with deep shadows and elements coming into and leaving the edges of the picture, all drawing in the viewer so you can't look away.

In the history of the cycle of violence between Israeli and Hezbollah, the confict in Lebanon may wind as just another violent battle in a long list. Pellegrin however sees the Lebanon fight as part of the turning point in modern war:

"Double Blind" ... rather encapsulates what it was like to experience that war firsthand, a war unlike any we've ever experienced — and perhaps a harbinger of the "modern" wars to come. As journalists, we were traveling a battlescape where all the traditional realities of the frontline had disappeared and where it was impossible to know how or where things were happening, or what might be about to happen next. It was, in many respects, an invisible war — until suddenly, it wasn't.

— Mark Murrmann

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