"War Photographer" is a free verse poem published by British writer Carole Satyamurti in 1987. The poem's speaker, the photographer of the title, reflects on how the unnatural "frame" a photograph imposes on the world can distort the truth and make people complacent about others' suffering. Illustrating this idea, the speaker describes a photograph they took of a little girl carrying a baby in a war zone; the photo's caption presents the girl as an inspiring symbol of the power of the "human spirit," but the speaker knows that she dropped the baby in terror when a bomb went off right after the picture was taken. The image, then, provides the public with a comforting but false narrative that doesn't reflect war's horrible reality.

• Read the full text of “War Photographer”

• “War Photographer” Summary

• “War Photographer” Themes

  • 

    The Limits of Media

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-8
    • Lines 16-28
  • 

    Complacency and Indifference to Suffering

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-28
  • 

    The Random Cruelty and Horror of War

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 13-21

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “War Photographer”

  • Lines 1-5

    The reassurance of ...
    ... make a subject.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 6-8

    Or if the ...
    ... how things are

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 9-12

    —as when at ...
    ... in champagne giggles

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 13-16

    —as last week, ...
    ... her; my finger pressed.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 17-21

    At the corner, ...
    ... began to run...

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 22-28

    The picture showed ...
    ... on a wall.

    

    

    

    

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• “War Photographer” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Imagery

    

    

    

    

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    Where imagery appears in the poem:

    • Lines 10-12: “a pair of peach, sun-gilded girls / rolling, silk crumpled, on the grass / in champagne giggles”
    • Lines 13-15: “a small girl / staggering down some devastated street, / hip thrust out under a baby's weight.”
    • Lines 17-21: “the first bomb of the morning / shattered the stones. / Instinct prevailing, she dropped her burden / and, mouth too small for her dark scream, / began to run...”
    • Lines 27-28: “its boundaries / arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall.”

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

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    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “frame,” “flexible”
    • Line 7: “can convince”
    • Line 10: “pair,” “peach,” “sun-gilded girls”
    • Line 11: “silk,” “grass”
    • Line 12: “giggles”
    • Line 13: “small”
    • Line 14: “staggering,” “down,” “some,” “devastated,” “street”
    • Line 16: “saw,” “seeing”
    • Line 20: “small,” “scream”
    • Line 24: “hell,” “human”
    • Line 26: “hell,” “heaven”

  • Asyndeton

    

    

    

    

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    Where asyndeton appears in the poem:

    • Line 3: “eat, sleep, love”
    • Line 4: “the tragic, the absurd”

  • Simile

    

    

    

    

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    Where simile appears in the poem:

    • Lines 26-28: “But hell like heaven, is untidy, / its boundaries / arbitrary as a blood stain on a wall.”

• “War Photographer” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Frame
  • Ascot
  • Sun-gilded
  • Prevailing
  • Arbitrary
  • (Location in poem: Line 1: “The reassurance of the frame is flexible”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “War Photographer”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “War Photographer” Speaker

• “War Photographer” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “War Photographer”

• More “War Photographer” Resources

  • External Resources

    • More Poems by Carole Satyamurti — Read and listen to other works by this poet.

    • Carole Satyamurti's Obituary — Read the obituary written after Carole Satyamurti's passing in 2019 to learn more about her life and influence.

    • Carol Ann Duffy's "War Photographer" — Read the poem "War Photographer" by Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, to which Satyamurti's poem perhaps responds.

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