Giles Duley – One Second of Light

Photographer: Giles Duley (born and resides in London, UK)

Essays: Gino Strada, A.L. Kennedy, Melissa Fleming, Giles Duley; conversation with Giles Duley and Roger Tatley

Text: English

Cloth-bound sewn hardcover; 172 pages, not numbered; four-color lithography, 117 images, numbered, captioned and with expanded background stories; list of organizations and charities; 28×21.5 cm, printed in the UK by Push, London

Photobook Designer: Shaz Madani

Notes:

Here we are, sixteen years after 9/11, and the conflicts and “collateral” suffering are continuing. The longest war in the Middle East is being ramped up again, and an end to the violence is nowhere on the horizon. Only a few months ago I reviewed the strong contribution by Paula Bronstein, Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear, a work that has been well received and admired, especially in regard to the courage and insights shown by her, depicting a society in which the role of women is still more limited.

Giles Duley is a superb storyteller of places and people in times of armed conflict and violence as well. He too has shown courage beyond all expectation, at tremendous personal cost. You may wish to see and hear his TED talk for inspiration. As a triple amputee he has become “a living example of what war does to people.” This pivotal event has intensified and focused his work even more, and he serves as a strong role model to others who have suffered a similar fate. A tremendous journey for a photographer that started out in the fashion and music industry! His goal has always been for his storytelling to have an impact on those who can change things, and I suspect also on the vast audience that elects those who make decisions affecting the lives of others.

As his work covers not only people in Afghanistan, but also in many other conflict-laden locales as well, this book is an effective collection of stories (from 2005 to 2015) of many individuals affected by a variety of strife in a variety of places: Angola, Bangladesh, Syria, South Sudan, Jordan, and the Ukraine, besides Afghanistan. Orphans, child soldiers, victims of acid attacks, war injuries, and the refugee crisis are just some of the problems to which his first-hand account introduces us. The captions that accompany the images are mini-capsule introductions to people’s lives, further expanded through additional information for each image in the back of the volume. As Melissa Fleming states in her introductory comments, “One Second of Light introduces us to the people hidden by numbers […] Through these images we form relationships. We find empathy and connect; we discover the displaced as fellow travellers […] We share moments of the most mundane intimacy.” And as the excerpted pages below show, a split second to take the photograph that allows us to view each person’s life, adding up to perhaps one second of time for all the photographs in the volume, represent a lifetime to those affected. As Duley states, “For those caught in these stories, the time and their suffering is a constant.” And Duley delivers sensitive and respectful glimpses into their worlds. The spirit of these individuals and groups against all possible odds is the focus of the stories told here, certainly also in the small moments of humor and happiness shown under very difficult circumstances.

A powerful and touching volume, highly recommended for all who care about the future of our world, and are seeking solutions other than violence! As Giles Duley says, “We can all make a difference!” His latest work, I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See: Photographs from the Refugee Crisis has been published this year.

Gerhard Clausing