The supplanting of photography by the moving image as the dominant visual mode of war reporting was heralded as long ago as the 1960s, evidenced not least by the labeling of events in Vietnam as the first ‘televisual war’. However, the military actions of the US-led coalition during the ‘war on terror’ have witnessed, if not a revival in the importance of photography as a mode of documentary evidence, at least a display of resilience in the medium. This paper is an attempt to understand the role of photography and photographic practice in the reporting of events during the 'war on terror'.

Whilst analysis of photography in a more general sense has become part of the disciplinary repertoire in the last twenty years or so, journalism, as a specific set of creative and knowledge-producing practices, has perhaps not received the attention that it deserves. ‘Photojournalism’ hints not at just an archive of images produced over a period of time, but also at the conventions and traditions of a particular kind of documentary practice.

I look to develop these ideas through reflecting upon the work Dutch war photographer Gert van Kesteren, and two very different photographic projects that emerged from his work in Iraq; the first 'Why Mister Why?', a standard photojournalism book, the product of a period of time embedded with US marines, the second, 'Baghdad Calling', a collection of images gathered from the mobile phones of exiled Iraqis across the region. Each book reflects a very different form of photographic practice, and in turn, each exhibits a very different kind of aesthetic. I use these differences as a way to explore the visual geopolitics of contemporary 'war reportage'.