The 15 chapters in this stimulating volume focus on the kind of dilemmas confronting photographers and by implication, other media image-makers, operating in the war zones that have horrified us, continuously, from Vietnam to the Americas and to Gaza.

The staff photojournalists' iconic image-making, forever embedded in death and destruction is not glorified here. The central problem for this discourse is the exploration of the aesthetics and methods applied to making photographs in the service of bringing social justice to traumatised populations, using truth-telling as the means to close gaps. Photography can effect the changes necessary through slow photo analysis of the complexity of the belligerence, in close cooperation with aftermath participants, together seeking a way ahead. This approach is in opposition to the victor writing a history of the pacification process, (discussed in 'Aerial Aftermaths, reviewed LDR 2019), where confusions of place––as topographies, histories, mythologies––are crystallised for the purposes of control, even suppression and latterly, as imperialist resource.

Photobooks made by freelance photojournalists during the American War in Vietnam, introduced the world audience to the daily life of a Vietnamese farmer, in direct contrast to the media representations of the same people as terrorists. Photobooks 'should be understood as part of the visual history of humanitarianism and a self-reflexive effort to construct the cultural conditions for peace.' (by both photographer, publisher and viewer together). This goes beyond bearing witness, a discussion that goes back to Greek theatre, where bringing the slaughtered bodies from an off-stage battle for the audience and chorus to witness and lament, was in the context of lengthy dramatic exposition. In most of the world's capitals in the 1970s and 80s, the photographic records of the destruction of life in Vietnam could be witnessed in glossy magazines, or in a hall or gallery of sequenced and captioned photographs. Understanding the full significance becomes distorted by the dominant media narratives.

In the 1980s, the women of Greenham Common, (a US missile base in the UK), used the perimeter fence to exhibit photos and writings of their experiences of protesting, building the role of womanhood in preserving the peace in the face of intransigent governments to East and West.

Cultural intervention, into the social and political superstructures of the Euro-Western orbit, have constantly kept artists, (and more recently scientists), mindful of the moral and ethical issues concomitant to their research, practice and the outcomes of their work. This volume expertly describes, with illustration, the more recent histories of photo practitioners in the field and the broad and specific discussions from respected commentators, in chapters skilfully integrated to provide for the student and related cultural researchers introductions and discussions of the highest standard, supported by a bibliography, notes and Index.