I'm going to hand the microphone now to my sister at the field and my sister in journalism,
Marie Colvin, who is very recently indeed back from the war in Libya.
Very, very hard to follow, Claude.
I thought I was talking about Lizard, but get historical.
Everybody seems to have prepared a speech.
It's one very round.
No, I want to. It is a room and a room.
This is, we're going back to John Singer Sergeant, one of the iconic moments of an image telling us what war is about.
Wilfred Owen wrote a poem that described this and he described to John Singer Sergeant,
this is a moment when everyone's being gassed.
This is a political war.
They can't breathe, they're bound over their eyes because of that.
And Wilfred Owen writes a poem that's actually much more powerful than anything probably I ever have written or will write,
which is about, if you want to send, he writes about, see a gas victim walking like this or thrown into the back of the truck.
See him gurgle with curd and blood and tell your son the glory of war.
Could we move on to the next one, which I wanted here because it takes on images.
I want to talk about images and I kind of want to talk about myself.
I write, I want to talk about how images and John sitting next to me saying, yes, John and I have worked together.
They talk about yourself in various ways and John will punch you in the face with an image.
So I am going to talk against myself.
I write in words, but you've got to read my words.
You've got to read my analysis.
I think that's important.
But John or John here will come up with an image that will punch you and make you feel something.
I wanted to move on from John Singer Sargent to an abstract to make my point that John Singer Sargent was so realist that affected you, didn't it?
Boy, that is, why is it that Picasso, which is completely abstract, I think we're all sitting in this room, that affects you even more than a realistic depiction of war.
I would like to show you even going further to kind of talk against myself as a writer.
I want to show you a video, which is a time when basically I was covering war and I went mad.
And where's Paul?
Paul and I went photographer.
We also became a video person.
We went completely mad.
Paul, do you want to stand up here somewhere?
Because I want to say that war drives you mad and I haven't done a kind of reasoned argument here about war.
I want to say that images are the way I think they can combine with anything I would write.
I want to show you the moment that I went mad and really what happened is I'd been in Miss Ratulibia for eight weeks and watching so much horror and what metal does to flesh that it became normal to Paul and I,
we were living, we were sitting on the floor of a hospital and there was just blood all over the place and we couldn't live anywhere else because the missiles were coming into Miss Ratulibia every day, every night.
When we took a break and had lunch, because I actually, sorry Paul, I dragged Paul to come and talk to this guy named Salah Hadid, named after the, you know, Kurd who took Jerusalem.
We were sitting there just this one moment.
We were actually going to have a lunch and it's, oh my God, what happened?
Okay, the neighbors have been, the missiles landed on their house, two doors down, we have to jump in a car or we then see, okay, she's been killed here, she's been killed here.
That's what our life was like.
So we went mad and I realized how mad we were when I would just walk over in a very exhausted way to the window of this floor, or place we were sitting, and I would just yell to Paul, children.
And he would know it's not like happy children, he would just know it's a different photo because now children have died, been charred and cut.
And that's what war is.
I was in a car coming here with my partner Richard, he said, you also have to point out the glorification of war.
And I do, that has to be made, there is a point to be made, the glorification of war.
But war is, Paul and I going mad and me just yelling in a tired way, children, and him knowing they're going to be cut up and I'm going to take a photo.
I'd like to go to that video now.
This is just him singing to Paul and I.
You don't know me, but I've seen you.
Oh, so high in my teeth, shooting at the hands of mine, just take good care.
Don't push the button, life's so precious when you're standing in a fire line.
Too much blood, too many tears shed, just how much we've worn the madness of the wilderness.
Have you had enough, just take good care of me.
Don't push the button, life's so precious when you're standing in a fire line.
I'm still horrified of every single image there.
I saw, Paul saw, Elizabeth of Steele, all of us covering Libya, covering war.
And when I thought about it, I thought about there's going to be many things to say.
But it's not just the importance of the image, of course there's the importance of the image.
I think that image, and that's why I kind of broadened what I wanted to say tonight.
I read the Chelsea Arts Club painting, John, what you do, what John Senior Sergeant did, what Picasso did, hit me there.
I wanted to broaden that and say that we are in the 21st century and video does that.
All of those images that we saw together and experienced together, they matter.
But I'd also like to move it on a little bit and just say, when we go from Iraq to Afghanistan,
to we cover war, I cover war, I care about it deeply.
But it isn't just the image, it is also why. Why do we cover war?
Why do I just come to this place where we're all kind of dressed up and show you images of war?
War is horrible. No one's going to stand here and debate me and say, hey, war is great.
I'm going to say war is horrible, you're going to say war is great, well that's not going to happen.
So there's a reason to cover war. The reason to cover war is that sometimes, actually, sorry to say, war is necessary.
But when that decision is made by a government, look at that, know what it means.
I lived in a place where I had to start taking stories and Paul Thugver who filmed that.
We wanted people who were still alive because it became normal to us to live in a place where, okay,
cut open the side of his chest, oh yeah, he's going to reach in because there's no electricity and there's no, well, there's kind of nothing.
He's going to try to move that heart, try to keep that heart pumping by literally reaching into someone's chest.
That just becomes normal. I think that what we're trying to say is not just the power of images from war,
but think about it, think about it, going to war means those people die, they are kids and they are women and they are dying and they are going to die in a horrific way.
And I did not go mad, I brought you back that video and my words for a reason.
I hope that means something to you tonight. Thank you.
