
Field Notes,
Nagorno-Karabakh
Anastasia Taylor-Lind is an internationally renowned English/Swedish photojournalist who works for leading editorial publications all over the world on issues relating to women, population and war. She is a 2016 Harvard Nieman Fellow and spent a year at the university researching war, and how we tell stories about modern conflict.
One Language is her debut collection of poetry, where verses sit alongside her powerful photography, creating a compelling method of storytelling that draws on Anastasia’s first-hand experience of conflict.
Here, Anastasia shares with us a poem from One Language.
She is currently documenting the war in Ukraine for international publications. Follow her journey on Instagram.
Words:
Anastasia Taylor-Lind
09.05
The hair salons in Stepanakert closed in late September –
women’s roots are as long as the war, a grey inch for each month.
This morning men gather at the government building
around a large military map that falls over the edges
of a desk belonging to the director of Emergency Situations.
They look for their missing sons. It’s my job to photograph this.
One Father finds his on Telegram, pixelated and de-faced.
At the morgue, unrecognisable remains wait on DNA matches.
Soldiers sing to their mothers on YouTube
and cry for them from hospital beds.
This is the first war to start during the pandemic. Mostly we’re
the only journalists wearing facemasks and the only all-female
reporting team – after a few weeks, we hear people referring to
us as ‘the girls from Nat Geo’.
Others mask-shame us. A French photographer walks up to
me at the hospital – ‘Why are you wearing a mask? There’s
no Covid here.’ There is and we’re reporting on it. Back at the
hotel, a Russian journalist asks ‘How am I going to kiss you on
the lips when you’re wearing that mask?’
14.15
The frescos at Dadivank are cut down, stone Khachkars
removed from their enclaves. A priest shouts No fotos, no fotos!
but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has bussed in journalists.
Evacuating the monastery is something they want us to see.
Babushkas light candles while Instagram influencers weep
in their selfies and Russian peacekeepers pose
like cellphone celebrities.
A house in the valley below goes up in flames. Is it a
coincidence this happens with the bus of foreign journalists
arrives – could it be planned? I feel bad for thinking this.
People are suffering and they know how their suffering looks in
pictures. I don’t photograph anything that’s staged for the press
but I can’t always tell what is real and what’s not.
17.21
We walk across the street to an empty room
where the police chief toasts to Game Over.
He invites us to drink homemade vodka
poured from a Coca Cola bottle,
to eat canned fish and bread – a long-life last supper.
We brought our friend home from the frontline
in a carrier bag he says.
Security evaluation – Kristen and I are alone.
This is a group of men with guns. Men with guns are
dangerous. Drunk men with guns are even more dangerous.
I feel bad for thinking this.
Nothing happened – if it did I’d edit out these men
as if they never existed.
Hollywood directors like their female journalists
to seduce the people they report on.
My male colleagues talk about the specific thrill
of fucking-under-fire.
Buy One Language by Anastasia Taylor-Lind here.
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