Bruce Haley's "Tao of War Photography"

War is terrible. It is crap.

Maybe someday I'll get the nerve to look at the photos I took when I was in combat in Vietnam. They aren't as good as these but my situations were perhaps different than this person making the photos. It's been forty years. I bought a scanner. Maybe it's time. Just not yet.

When I came back I visited with my Uncle who fought during WWII and was captured by the Germans and escaped. He said to me, "I will never forget the look on the eyes of the first solder I killed."
War is not fun. It's not pretty. It's glamorized by many who haven't/didn't participate.

WOW, I don't really know what to say. The photography is impressive. To impressive where it truly tells of an awful story.
Thanks for sharing.

After looking through Mr. Haley’s portfolio, all I can say is what unholy shit we do to each other and our planet in the name of power and God.

I cannot imagine what it is to be Bruce Haley. To willingly bear the weight of obviously such a deep and what must be a costly love with the world we have made and to remain an unrelentingly honest witness to what he has experienced.

Haley's photographs make me really think and I hope they will haunt me for a long time.

Ellis, You summed up much of my thought that I could not put into words.

Thanks for the post! The real deal!

Back in 1960 I was posted to Taiwan(Formosa). I went as a pilot not a photographer. When I got there I was assigned to stay in downtown Tainan in the Marco Polo hostel. You dared not touch the slimy walls in the shower. I was asked whether I wanted a room on the sixth floor with the bats, or on the fifth floor with the rats. I chose the rats. I awoke the first night at about three staring into the face of a rather large rat who, as it turned out, was more afraid of me than I was of him but just barely. The next day I moved to the sixth floor. Nothing like stepping in bat guano in your bare feet. This is to say, in a much lesser way, I do understand a little of Bruce Haley's fascination with the way much of the less fortunate world lives, although like Gunga Din, he is a far better man than I am. Later, I saw my war from the cockpit of an airplane. War is much easier that way. You can fly back to Thailand and sleep soundly sans rats. I still have a strong fascination with those less fortunate and violent parts of the world. Haley's photographs are superb and serve a very high purpose. They tell a story that needs to be told over and over again. Maybe if some of those important politicians who have never even seen those nether parts of the world nor have ever served had seen what Bruce Haley has seen they would have restrained that false, insular and arrogant bravado that sent so many of our bestand most dedicated off to die and be maimed.

Very powerful..what to say, he and his work speaks for itself.

Riveting.

The Burma executions series is little more than a low speed snuff film. You have to be a sick bastard and a terrible coward to photograph a man being killed like that without doing anything about it. And NO, I don't think those photographs will do anything to stop killings like that one from happening. There was a person there at the moment who could have tried to stop it, but he was more interested in playing with his camera. Bruce Haley should lose his credentials as a Human Being.