The personal diary of a former war photographer delves into the complex emotions and motivations behind his choice to work in conflict zones. Christoph Bangert candidly expresses his struggle with the addiction to the meaning found in war, juxtaposed with the emotional toll it takes on his loved ones. As he navigates life in peace, he confronts the haunting memories of his experiences, acknowledging that while the war will forever influence him, he has resolved never to return to it.
'In my experience, the two most significant characteristics of war are horror and absurdity,' says Christoph Bangert, the German photojournalist who has been documenting crises for international publications such as the New York Times for ten years. Following on from his critically acclaimed book War Porn (Kehrer, 2014, also avaialble), Hello Camel continues to disrupt the west's understanding of what war looks like. Bangert's images oppose the cliched notion that modern war is dynamic and dramatic; they are calm and composed, but equally odd and alien.
As a photographer covering conflicts and natural disasters for international publications, Christoph Bangert is regularly confronted with a dilemma: On the one hand he tries to document events as truthful to his own experience as possible but on the other hand he needs to accommodate several layers of self-censorship. Using his images taken during the past ten years in Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, Lebanon and Gaza, Bangert started an experiment: What would happen if we suppressed our need for self- censorship? The result is a raw yet personal book.