Christine Spengler
Taking Sides with the Oppressed
War photography is a hard business. The many women and men who work in conflict zones are exposed to the sight of violence, death and pain almost every day. Experiencing this suffering and capturing it on film is not an easy task, and poses many questions and challenges for the photographers: How can they succeed in covering the generally highly complex circumstances of these conflicts in such a way that they can be read and understood by their recipients – primarily consumers of media? Where should they draw the boundary between preserving authenticity and serving voyeurism when depicting explicit violence? And finally, how can the people behind the camera come to terms with their own experiences?
French photographer Christine Spengler spent more than 30 years working in war and conflict zones. Spengler, who was born in 1945 in Alsace and grew up in Madrid, came to the profession more or less by chance. In 1970, in her mid-twenties, she was travelling through Chad with her younger brother, when they got caught up in an armed conflict, and she began taking photographs with his camera. Although this led them both to be arrested and held for weeks under suspicion of spying, it was this incident that prompted Christine Spengler to become a war photographer. Her career took her first to Northern Ireland, where she documented the bloody civil war in 1972. This was followed by countless assignments in many different countries and regions, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Western Sahara, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Spengler delivered her pictures to major photo agencies like AP, Sigma and Sipa, and they appeared on the front pages of prestigious newspapers and magazines, such as Life, Paris Match, Time and Newsweek.
Following her decision to devote her work to the innocent victims of war, she photographed mainly women and children. Her pictures show with great empathy how, amid the turmoil of war, they try to cope with day-to-day life, to survive and bear the unspeakable violence around them. In doing so, Spengler also reveals the dauntlessness of the women who play an active role in war, either as photographers like herself, or as fighters. She sympathised above all with the many children who were forced to grow up with the unchallenged presence of weapons, and in some conflicts like in Northern Ireland to even become accomplices. For Spengler, the determination with which many of them nevertheless succeeded in defying the chaos, continuing to live and enjoy themselves, was also a sign of hope.
Seeing and photographing such hardship and distress also left its mark on Christine Spengler. When she was in her late 50s, she quit being a war photographer and began making colourful, surreal collages. Creating something beautiful is a kind of “exorcism”, she explains, that helps her to process her traumatic experiences.
Biographical information
1945
born in Alsace, France
1952
moved to Madrid, Spain
1970
takes her first photo in Chad, during the Toubou wars and decides to work as a war photographer
1972
documents conflicts in Northern Ireland
1973
works in Vietnam, and works for the Associated Press agency
1974 to 1975
works in Cambodia and photographs the bombardment of Phnom Penh
1976 to 1979
works in West Sahara and takes photos of the fighters of the Polisario Front for the "Time" magazine
1981
works in Nicaragua and El Salvador
1982 to 1984
works in Lebanon
1997
works in Afghanistan for a month to photograph women oppressed by the Taliban
1998
awarded with the Prix Roger-Pic for her project “Femmes dans la guerre” from Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia (SCAM) in Paris
2000
works in Kosovo for the “El Mundo” magazine
2003
works in Iraq commissioned by "Paris-Match" magazine
2007
is honoured with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres
lives in Ibiza, Spain