Down the Barrel

            War art always tells a very stark story. It tells specific stories and usually indicates a very decisive view. Ivan Shagin’s On a Raid is no exception. This photo shows three large gun barrels pointed towards a sea with two military destroyers in the background. The view comes from directly beneath the gun barrels, so one is unable to tell if it is coming from a tank or another ship at sea. These barrels dominate the photographs composition, taking up more than half of the field of view. To me this represents the enormity of the war machines rolling over the earth during world war two. This war was one of the largest scale in our world’s history. No country in the Western world was able to escape its impact, either directly or indirectly. In the middle of this photograph is a flag. It is unclear which country this flag belongs to. This flag is one of the main focal points of the photograph. All three-gun barrels are pointed towards it; the barrels form the bottom of a triangle with the flag being the tip. This flag, compared to the gun barrels is very small, yet still standing tall against their advance.  This represents the hope that those affected most directly by the war held on to, the hope that they and their way of life may still endure. The ships in the background tie into this as well. They are coming towards the flag and the barrels, almost as if to offer more hope to the people of the flag.