If I Don't Take This Photograph People Like my Mom Will Think War is What They See on TV - Kenneth Jarecke

I didn’t know I was awake, that’s what made me fearless.

I never left her side.

It hung loosely around my neck, like my protector. Looking through this window made everything seem like a dream, but the dust in my eyes told me it wasn’t. You don’t feel the details of a dream like that. I didn’t have time to check it.

The sands of these lands were heavy with all the lives they held, one of them his. I couldn’t forget the way he fell, it was in my mind and also in my hand. He took his last breath before he hit the ground. He was still alive when the shutter clicked. The sun shone on his wedding ring before the blood had a chance to run down his arm. He was still alive in my picture, still but alive. It felt distant, even though I was up close.

The sun left us alone as clouds framed hills in the background, the moon a night-light that watched everything with sorrow. It never rained here nothing could be washed away.

The vest was uncomfortable to sleep in, but you never knew when you would have to move. I didn’t like wearing it and wouldn’t if I had the choice. I took it off once and the others thought it was some sort of statement about who was stronger. I slipped back into it to ease their egos rather than my mind.

I’d been shot twice before. You don’t really fear anything anymore when you know what it feels like, or what it looks like. I wonder if they knew that?

Many questioned the humanity of what I did, but that was only because they weren’t used to sitting with such intense feelings, ones that I felt every day.

Show me the truth so I might change my path. 
Everyone always says they want the truth and liars in our world are looked upon with such disdain, but they don’t know that a lot of the time they can’t deal with it, by then they’re already too damaged to feel like that again.

Even though this was like another world, I felt at home. I was more like these people than the one I shared my bed with, because they wanted to know, they held their feeling, moved on and felt regret when they became used to it. At least I was more removed behind this lens, or at least it felt like that, but then when I was back home I knew I wasn’t, as tears of guilt stained my face and the basin ran red from the blood on my camera strap.

 Photojournalism complies with a rigid ethical framework which demands that the work is both honest and impartial whilst telling the story in strictly journalistic terms.