Abstract
While Brecht relied on professional photojournalists and mainstream media, Broomberg and Chanarin source images from "the bad new things": insurgents, soldiers' blogs, and ordinary civilians. War Primer 2 by Adam Broomberg | Oliver Chanari...
This paper analyzes War Primer 2 (2011) by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, a contemporary "hack" of Bertolt Brecht’s 1955 Kriegsfibel (War Primer). By overlaying images from the "War on Terror" onto Brecht’s original plates, the artists transition Brecht’s critique of WWII press photography into the era of the internet, mobile phone footage, and biometric surveillance. This study examines how the work re-functions the "photo-epigram" to expose the political economy behind modern conflict imagery. mobile phone footage