[ BOOK LIVES ] Fear This by Anthony Suau

Sometimes, you just need to be ‘outside’ to see more clearly. And that’s exactly what Anthony Suau did with Fear This.

Like many of his American contemporaries, Suau honed his skills in daily newspapers. In fact, my first ‘encounter’ with him was his moving picture of a widow hugging a headstone at a cemetery on Memorial Day. 

It was probably this 1983 image, and not any of Robert Frank’s, that introduced me to the idea/concept of the flag as an icon in photography.

When the Iraq War started in 2003, Paris-based Suau decided to photograph in the USA, instead of heading to Baghdad, where most of his friends and competitors went. 

Sure Iraq was where the ‘real actions’ were going to be, but truth is, there was another important war front at home. Not photographing that aspect would be adding to the one-sidedness that Suau has noticed.

Suau may not identified himself as a pacifist but he was definitely against the war that went on from 2003 to 2011. Like many skeptics(myself included), he was not convinced by the evidences the Western war hawks presented.

In a 2004 interview with OpenDemocracy, he says, “I was adamantly against going to war the way we did, so for me to be in that environment it was very important not to express my opinion. Otherwise I felt I might have been attacked.”

But Suau worked doubly hard to present both sides of the argument. 

He adds, “I think it’s important to look at both sides before forming an opinion. If I was really going to make a portrayal of America at war, it was imperative for me to look at things that I did not agree with.”

I did not feel as much for this book when I first bought it more than a decade ago but more than 15 years later, I appreciate Suau’s images a lot more. 

If anything, they reminded me that it was more ’normal’ back then for people with different opinions to have the platforms to air them. Are we better now? Or are we even more polarised?

I wondered then and I am still wondering now: What is the ‘This’ that his title “Fear This” is referring to? 

One thing’ I am fairly certain: This’ is clearly not empathy because this book has plenty of that.

Perhaps ‘This’ is the fear that war, once again, was used as a weapon to scare people into submission. 

Fear This
by Anthony Suau
Aperture
ISBN 978-1931788533