Most Important Analysis of Duffy's War Photographer

In this video, we cover:

• Key Themes: The lasting trauma and PTSD of war versus the casual indifference of everyday life; the power of art to provoke change versus its ultimate powerlessness in the face of public apathy.

• Stanza 1 Language ("Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass."): The end-stopped tricolon of war-torn locations showing that conflict can be found anywhere, paired with the biblical allusion to the transience and fragility of human life.

• Stanza 2 Language ("Solutions slop in trays... hands, which did not tremble then, though seem to now"): The double meaning of "solutions" (photographic chemicals vs. political/moral solutions to end war), alongside the delayed physical onset of PTSD and trauma once back in safe domestic space.

• Stanza 3 Language ("How the blood stained into foreign dust"): Euphemistic descriptions of death hiding raw emotional pain, and the metaphor of the photographer himself as temporary "foreign dust" permanently stained by the traumatic memories he captures.

• Stanza 4 Language (The Editor & The Final Line): The stark juxtaposition between "a hundred agonies" and the casual "five or six" picked out by the editor, ending on the privileged position of the final line: "he earns a living and they do not care."

• Structural Patterns: Four regular six-line stanzas reflecting the photographer’s desire for strict order, the volta at "Something is happening", and how rhyming couplets create an illusion of resolution in a never-ending cycle of conflict.

• Context & Real-World Allusions: Carol Ann Duffy's friendship with real photojournalists like Don McCullin, the historical allusion to Nick Ut's iconic Vietnam War photograph ("running children in a nightmare heat"), and Duffy’s biting critique of Western media consumption.

Timestamps

• 0:00 – Overview: The Premise of the War Photographer & The Two Sides of War

• 0:54 – What are the Key Themes in the Poem 'War Photographer'? (Conflict, PTSD, Memory, & Power)

• 3:13 – Stanza 1 Quote Analysis: Belfast, Beirut, Phnom Penh & "All Flesh is Grass"

• 6:04 – Stanza 2 Quote Analysis: "Solutions Slop in Trays" & Hands That Tremble Now

• 8:07 – Stanza 3 Quote Analysis: "How the Blood Stained into Foreign Dust" & Emotional Euphemism

• 10:30 – Stanza 4 Quote Analysis: 100 Agonies vs. 5 or 6 & "They Do Not Care"

• 13:44 – Structural Analysis: Regular 6-Line Stanzas, The Volta ("Something is Happening"), & Rhyme Schemes

• 17:08 – What Context Do I Need to Know? (Don McCullin, Vietnam War Allusion, & Western Media Critique)

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There are also study materials on the site that can help with this IGCSE:

• Fiction Technique Bank: An extensive revision toolkit outlining key linguistic and structural devices, complete with explanations and model examples to show you how to analyse writer's craft rather than just spotting techniques.

• Unlocking Shakespeare: A complete student guide packed with practical reading strategies, contextual breakdowns, and methods to decode Early Modern English without getting stuck in the language.

• Still I Rise Teaching PowerPoint: A fully resourced, line-by-line slide deck exploring form, structure, poetic devices, and historical context for focused study or revision.

• Poetry Technique Bank: A dedicated guide designed specifically to master poetic form, metre, rhyme schemes, and structural choices across both seen anthology and unseen poetry questions.

Lesson Transcript

0:00 – Overview: The Premise of the War Photographer & The Two Sides of War

This poem is about, you guessed it, a war photographer. We've got a war photographer who at the start of the poem has just come back from a war and is developing the photos from that war. While developing the photos, one particular picture sparks a memory in him of something kind of traumatic, the death of a person that was traumatic that he had to capture. It then explains the moment where of all the photos that he's captured, his editor picks a few. Our war photographer begins to feel disillusioned by the whole process and gets on a plane to go on to his next project, feeling very much like, you know, his job is basically useless because nobody cares.

So this poem is really interesting in exploring two sides to the coin of war: on the one hand, the pain and suffering and trauma of the people who experience it, and then on the other hand, the utter indifference of the people who don't.

0:54 – What are the Key Themes in the Poem 'War Photographer'? (Conflict, PTSD, Memory, & Power)

The biggest theme to this poem is undoubtedly the effect of conflict, because we see the two sides to the effect of conflict, as I've already mentioned. We see how people going through war, like the war photographer who's there to take photos, and the uh man mentioned in the poem who dies, who go through some suffering, some trauma, some pain as a result of conflict. But we also on the other hand see how conflict has no effect on people who are not directly involved in it. You know, the bath and the pre-lunch beers, the editor that picks out a few um five or six pictures from the 100 agonies. So there's a sense there of that indifference that they have.

You also have the internal conflict of our war photographer, because he essentially goes through, number one, feeling the kind of PTSD, strong emotion of um the effect that war has had on him, but also the frustration, the indifference of feeling like his job is pointless because nobody's paying attention, nobody's listening anyway.

Linked to that, you also see the power of memory, because it is the uh memory of um that comes back to him from a piece of art in the um a piece of art that he's developed—a photo that he's developed. There we go, got the word I wanted eventually! From a photo that he's developed, it sparks his memory, and we see how the memory can bring back so many emotions to him that he was managing to hold back before.

We can also say it looks at power in general. So on the one hand, the war photographer seems to have a lot of power, because it's mentioned that his, you know, "solutions slop in trays," like his photographs are the solutions by making people care about war via his photos um. And he talks about, you know, doing what somebody must. His his job has a great deal of significance and power and importance to it. But there's also a uh powerlessness to it as well that we get from the, you know, editor that just picks out five or six, and he earns his living and they do not care. So there's a kind of conflict there between to what extent, you know, what is the power that he as a war photographer holds, or perhaps on a wider scale that art like war photography really holds? What is its power to actually make a difference? What is its significance in society? So quite a few different really interesting themes there.

3:13 – Stanza 1 Quote Analysis: Belfast, Beirut, Phnom Penh & "All Flesh is Grass"

For the language, I'm going to aim to tell you about one great quote from within each stanza. Starting off with stanza one, I recommend looking at: "Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass."

Belfast, Beirut, and Phnom Penh are three uh locations around the world that have all experienced conflict. And so you could say, okay, perhaps these are locations the war photographer has been to, war photographer has been to. But on a deeper level, you can say that these are all locations that have experienced war. And by showing that range in the tricolon, it's as if we're getting a sense of how, just like, war can be found everywhere. Also, I like the fact that they are all fragments. They're just little end-stops uh within the line on their own, as if no further explanation is needed. You just have to say "Belfast" or say "Beirut" or say "Phnom Penh," and people are like, "Yeah, I know about that." And like the the the link to war is immediately made. And I think that's part of showing that power of conflict as well, and how it comes to define a location um. And again, can define locations all around the world, cuz war can be found everywhere.

That tricolon also links in to the metaphor we had before of the church and the priests, and then the "all flesh is grass." So "all flesh is grass" is a biblical allusion, so it's carrying on that metaphor, that religious metaphor of the um war photographer being like the priest preparing to intone a mass. So in that sense, the Belfast, Beirut, Phnom Penh is like almost like his mass, you know? It's like he has has that power in terms of he captures the um suffering going on in all of these different kinds of locations with the war that's going on.

However, that biblical allusion of "all flesh is grass," I forget exactly where it comes from in the Bible, but that doesn't matter. The point is that it is about conveying that life is transient, which means temporary. So it's that idea of, you know, talking about people not as complete human beings, but as, you know, our biological nature of a piece of flesh that will eventually decompose and return to nature and become grass. So in that sense, it's creating a sense of how sort of insignificant human life becomes um when you're just faced with endless war.

And because this is coming in our very first stanza—a little bit of structural analysis here—because this is coming in our very first stanza, we still have this question of: to whom is all flesh grass? Is this our war photographer's perception? Is he the one who's thinking that it's all like become insignificant because he's become disillusioned by his job, um or is it society at large? And of course, what we're going to get a sense of more of as the poem goes on is that it's kind of both, but more society that's made—and that's made our war photographer a bit disillusioned.

6:04 – Stanza 2 Quote Analysis: "Solutions Slop in Trays" & Hands That Tremble Now

In the second stanza, my recommendation is to have a look at the quote: "Solutions slop in trays beneath his hands, which did not tremble then, though seem to now." So, uh, hands are obviously very important for a uh war photographer. They're a big part of like taking the photo. Um, so the fact that they did not tremble then: so it seems like he was, it's suggesting to us he was very kind of um unafraid and certain and focused when he was completing his job. He was very dedicated to ensuring he got those quality photos. But of course now they are trembling. And so what we can infer from that, from that use of the word "tremble," is perhaps a sense of fear. But what's interesting is that he's home now, and so it's perhaps talking about that delayed effect of conflict. He is only now starting to kind of process and feel all the kind of different fears that were going on in his uh mind.

There's also something interesting in that "solutions slop in trays." So uh, on the one hand, the solutions can just be like the the chemicals that's slopping around in the trays, the chemicals he's developing the photos in, but it could also refer to the photos themselves. And the poem is referring to the photos that are in the chemicals in the trays as solutions. And in that sense, it could be alluding to how like uh photography of war is often seen as a solution to how to fix it: like if we just raise awareness of what's going on, people are going to want to step in, people are going to want to stop this um. And so it's this idea of like the power of the art in the the war photography; it's seen as a key strategy to trying to end conflict. But of course, what we're going to get later on is that actually it's ineffective because of people's indifference, blah blah blah blah. But at this point, there's it's implying that potential power behind his job as a war photographer, and how his photos could perhaps be those solutions to the ending of wars.

8:07 – Stanza 3 Quote Analysis: "How the Blood Stained into Foreign Dust" & Emotional Euphemism

For the third stanza, I am going to recommend the line: "how the blood stained into foreign dust." Now, in this stanza, he's obviously at this point been talking about the memory of one of the photos that he took, capturing the kind of painful moment of somebody who is killed, and he he like captures a photo um of that moment. And he describes the pain, the pain, the "blood stained into foreign dust."

Now, one way of reading that is just the actual like it's euphemistic of talking about the guy dying um. And if it's euphemistic, we have to ask ourselves, okay, why couldn't he be more explicit about it, you know? Referring it in a kind of passive way of talking about his blood staining into the ground as a way of communicating he died. Is it that the war photographer can't bring himself to explicitly say what he saw? He can't quite handle it, and therefore this line of the poem is telling us something about how the war photographer is trying to deal with his emotions um, because this stanza is all about really starting to reinforce that that change in his emotional state, as we had that "something is happening" line at the start of the stanza.

There's also though a way of asking about the impact that the war is having on his memory and how it's affecting him, in the sense of whether uh the war photographer himself is part of this metaphor. So "the blood stained into foreign dust": the blood is like the uh memory of this person dying, and the foreign dust is the war photographer. So "foreign" because, you know, he's not from this country um, and the dust it the dust is an interesting one: it's something like temporary, it's something um that rises from something else and then is gone um. So there's an interesting comparison there of: is the war photographer referring to like the transience of his presence, the transience of his involvement, the insignificance perhaps of his involvement, of his presence in it all? Um, but there's also a sense of with it being stained, that sense of like it having a—man, I'm saying "a sense of" all the time, I'm sorry, I can't seem to stop myself today! But there is a sense of the uh memory having a really big impact on him um via that metaphor of it being stained.

10:30 – Stanza 4 Quote Analysis: 100 Agonies vs. 5 or 6 & "They Do Not Care"

For this last stanza, it was so hard to decide which one to uh to pick. I think it's such a beautifully visceral attack on society um and how indifferent we are to the agonies of the world. My personal preference, my personal recommendation is um either—I I can't narrow it down, I'm going to go for two!

Either: "A hundred agonies in black and white / from which his editor will pick out five or six / for Sunday's supplement." So there you've got the juxtaposition between "a hundred agonies" versus "five or six." You've got the uh dynamic verb "pick out," this idea of the editor having that kind of power to choose um what is worthy of being seen and what is not. But also that that language of picking something out when it's juxtaposed against "agonies": "pick out" sounds very uh has connotations of being quite kind of casual, whereas "agonies" is very intense and emotional because of the intense suffering behind it. So uh the combination of those two is is quite kind of troubling and uncomfortable um, yeah, because it's like, you know, he's just picking out some, "Oh, whose whose unhappiness shall I do I feel like showing today?" Um, and yeah, it just feels really dark. And of course, the Sunday supplement is a symbol of media as a whole; it's not just specific to Sundays or anything like that, but this is all a comment on the media. So this whole thing is a comment on how the media will essentially focus on what they're interested in um, perhaps not paying attention to everything, all the suffering, as they should do.

The other option I would potentially go for, and the reason I've kind of forced myself to give two options here, is because of this one being a privileged position as well of the last line. So it says: "From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where / he earns his living and they do not care." I think that last line, "he earns a living and they do not care," is really important. So the being on an aeroplane, he's off to his next destination again, so it's got that sense of things just going on and on and on um. The "impassively"—that complete like loss of emotion contrasted to the real emotion we were starting to get in the second and third stanza. And then that "he earns his living": the way he just refers to his job via just the the money involved. He makes no mention anymore of like the solutions that are slopping in trays and the potential power of what he does; it's just "they do not care."

And there's a question, of course, around: who is the "they" that do not care? So you can argue it's like society as a whole, people not involved in war, the people with the power to do something about it. You know, they do don't care. Which of course again is a really different image to what we had in the first stanza of him being like a priest preparing to intone a mass. So there's essentially been this change where it's gone from feeling like he actually had a lot of power with his photography, and there was that potential to really change things and it really impacted him, and then it's all basically lost in this last stanza. It's all just everything is made to feel insignificant and meaningless um. And yeah, it's just, oh man, it's so good, so so good!

13:44 – Structural Analysis: Regular 6-Line Stanzas, The Volta ("Something is Happening"), & Rhyme Schemes

There's three things I would uh talk about for the structure of this poem.

The first is the fact that it is broken up into four stanzas that are all six lines each. The reason that I would say that that is significant is because what it basically does is create that pattern, that consistency to the stanza length. And we could perhaps link that consistency to the war photographer himself and how he works in a very kind of ordered, consistent way. Like we're told at the beginning, he sets everything out in ordered rows. It could also perhaps represent the consistency, the uh never-ending kind of cycle going on in the same pattern of conflict itself um, which is reflected in the structure of the poem in that at the start of the poem he's just come back from war, at the end of the poem he's off to another one. So it kind of fits again with that kind of sense of things ongoing.

I would also recommend talking about the volta in the poem in the line "Something is happening." Now on a simple level, this is just the the "something" is the photo being developed. However, the something else that is happening as a result of this photo being developed is our photographer starting to relive the memory, a much more specific memory that he had from his time that he's just—the war that he's just come from, and then all of the feelings associated from that. So up to this point, he's been keeping things quite kind of um ordered, and, you know, he has a job to do, and he's the priest preparing to intone a mass, like he's very kind of structured and formal and organized. Now this stanza, it's going to be much more about him like feeling the um actions that he's had to take while he's been out at war. So that's that volta there of the something that's happening. That's of course also important because the other feeling we have happen in the last stanza is just that utter like kind of um change in feelings of apathy in him of, you know, his job is is pointless. Nobody's paying attention to it, everybody's indifferent to it as well.

The final thing I would talk about is the rhyme scheme. So in this poem, um it has rhyming couplets at the end of all of the stanzas. Now, if you have an accent like mine, you might be looking at that first stanza and thinking, "Mass and grass? They don't rhyme!" You have to remember Carol Ann Duffy is Scottish, so she—I'm not going to attempt to do a Scottish accent here cuz that would just be horrific for everybody involved, but she doesn't pronounce it "grah-ss," she pronounces it "grass." Um, so it's mass and grass, so it does rhyme! Um, but yeah, you've got rhyming uh rhyming couplets at the end of all of the stanzas. Why? Well, rhyming couplets are very frequently used um to create a sense of finality or conclusions. That was the classic way that Shakespeare used to use them in his plays. So what's interesting about that is it helps feed into that way of war, in the sense of: things seem to come to a nice conclusion, and then it starts again; and it comes to a nice conclusion, and then it starts again; and then it comes to a conclusion, and it starts again. And so it creates that feeling of like things never truly conclude; they just go again and again and again, and it creates that sense of the repetitive nature of a war photographer's job, going from location to location to location. So it feeds in really nicely there with that stanza length and the consistent stanzas, too.

17:08 – What Context Do I Need to Know? (Don McCullin, Vietnam War Allusion, & Western Media Critique)

I wouldn't say that there's masses of context to know about this poem. The context is fairly obvious in the sense that it's inspired by the work of real war photographers. And you can see that in the line of the poem about the "running children in a nightmare heat," which is a reference to this uh famous photo taken during the Vietnam War of um children running naked. Um I think they'd been like a napalm bomb and they were running away and it hit them and it burnt all their clothes off. Um, so it's a poem about, you know, a real job that exists and examining their experiences of what it's like to be involved in conflict. And that's certainly something that inspired Carol Ann Duffy.

Beyond that, I wouldn't say there's a lot. If you um do need to talk about context for this poem and you need to talk about context of production, then essentially what you need to talk about is: what was Carol Ann Duffy trying to say? And then that's how you're going to get your context in. And what Carol Ann Duffy is trying to explore is the trauma of war for people involved in it, the people who uh suffer through it and people like the war photographer who have to have their job involved in it, but how that also conflicts with the utter indifference of wider Western society. I mean, I'm saying Western society, but of course like, you know, Belfast, the conflict can be within the West as well um. But, you know, she's—I think with the reference to like Sunday supplements and pre-lunch beers, she's got the United Kingdom in her mind. Certainly with that kind of imagery, she's got um Western culture in mind with that kind of imagery.

So I would say that she's essentially simultaneously trying to show a lot of empathy for the trauma of war, but also criticize the apathy and indifference of wider society that's not involved in the war