.png){kind=icon}
.png){kind=icon}
Return
Visualizing war? What images cannot speak
.png){kind=icon}
PRE
AI
DOI：10.1080/23337486.2026.2661433.png)
.png){kind=icon}
Original request for help.png){kind=icon}
Share.png){kind=icon}
Save
Abstract
En 中文
Images have become central to how contemporary conflicts are interpreted, but their authority is often overstated. Although visuals are powerful, they may also flatten complex histories, circulate without context, and be mobilized for propaganda or disinformation. These tensions are well-acknowledged in work on visual militarism and surveillance, yet less attention has been paid to what images miss-especially in protracted conflicts where violence unfolds unevenly. Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork in the Kurdish borderlands of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, this Encounters piece examines the limits of visual documentation in spaces shaped by surveillance, violence, displacement, and ongoing militarization. Photographs can show ruins and material destruction, but they rarely convey the slow erosion of everyday life, the emotional labour of endurance, or the memories that shape how violence is felt. At times, taking a photograph felt insufficient-or ethically inappropriate-and it was in these refusals that the limits of visuality became most apparent. Likewise, the personal archives kept by displaced families reveal forms of memory and attachment that exceed what a single image can hold and resist the narratives imposed through state-authorized visibility. By emphasizing the politically situated nature of visual evidence, this piece contributes to debates on visual methods in critical military studies in three ways: it highlights how images can mislead as much as they reveal; it shows how disinformation exploits visual authority; and it calls for approaches that pair visual analysis with listening, witnessing, and attention to what lies beyond the frame.
Keywords:
War and representation
photography as a method
borderlands
visuality and its limits
militarization