[Brookside]

Deathcopter > Images 0f War



Helicopters and Mosques as Icons of Culture Clash




I'm a big fan of photojournalism. I was wondering how some photographers portrayed the Iraq War without the almost obligatory images of carnage.
As everyone knows the helicopter has numerous missions in war- some lifesaving, some life-taking.
I started a file of images that showed both a helicopter and a mosque as a metaphor for cultures at odds with one another. Please feel free to post your images.

2 photos are by the great photographer Marko Drobnjakovic...one published in the NewYorkTimes and the other from the Washington Post.









Transgression



Boeing and its joint-venture partner Bell Helicopter apologized yesterday for a magazine ad published a month ago — and again this week by mistake — depicting U.S. Special Forces troops rappelling from an Osprey aircraft onto the roof of a mosque.

"It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell," reads the ad, which ran this week in the National Journal and earlier in the Armed Forces Journal. The ad also stated: "Consider it a gift from above."

The ad appears at a time when the United States is trying to improve its image in the Muslim world and Boeing seeks to sell its airplanes to Islamic countries.

Boeing and Bell officials agreed that the ad — touting the capabilities of the vertical-lift Osprey aircraft — was ill-conceived and should never have been published.
Source : SeattleTimes

[Brookside]

[Brookside]

[LonghornTX]

Good work Brookside

[kway]

Some powerful photos.... Makes me really stop and think about what's going on over there as I'm here just carrying on with life as usual. And what are the dominant stories in the media this week? An unstable astronaut and Anna Nicole Smith.

[Brookside]

Thanks guys.
I was motivated by how I could portray something
incredibly complicated and controversial by an image that wouldn't be
"loaded" with emotion and bias. Everyone can draw their own conclusions.

The helicopter seems a perfect image...technological, fast...not rooted to a place but definitely reflective of an ideology that relies on ingenuity and transformation.
It is a vehicle- a carrier...by numerous definitions.

The mosque is stabile, centered, linked to a religion, and to many of us, a symbol of difference (the other) and exoticism.
The building is earth-bound but a representation of the spiritual.
Both images are remarkably similar.

[Declan]

I love reading your off-topic threads. The subjects really are a clash of what's new and technological compared to something thats as old as modern man.

Any idea if the osprey is now a fully functioning military chopper? When I was in college I remember doing some research on it and it was still in the testing stages but having lots of technical issues and was at risk of being cancelled altogether.

[Brookside]

according to this official navy aviation site Iraqi's can look forward to seeing the Osprey in Fall/2007.




Navy/Osprey site:http://www.navair.navy.mil/v22/

[LonghornTX]

Originally Posted by Brookside

according to this official navy aviation site Iraqi's can look forward to seeing the Osprey in Fall/2007.




Navy/Osprey site:http://www.navair.navy.mil/v22/

Hmm, I am suprised the Osprey is going to be put into service. All I seem to remember about the aircraft are all the training and research flights that crashed.....Hmmm, maybe they have worked out the kinks?