There are people who hint that they face dangers while pursuing their job or their passions, and then there are people who actually do. The former can often be found among those who explore abandoned buildings, factories and mansions. The latter are war photographers.

I was thinking about this when I came across work by a photographer, Bryan Sansivero, who often takes pictures in abandoned buildings. Let me hasten to add I don’t know if he describes his photo shoots as dangerous, but they are presented as spontaneous finds. http://boredomtherapy.com/haunting-abandoned-mansion/

When you check out his website you realize that a lot of what he photographed has been turned into stylized decay –

http://www.bryansansivero.com/americandecay/

with a glorious sense for color, I might add. It looks like something that you wouldn’t be surprised to find in glitzy Town&Country Magazine, which has jumped on the bandwagon of documenting “eerie” settings:

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/g19735205/abandoned-mansions/

Contrast this with people who risk their lives, and in the cases I chose for today, pay with them for what they see as their calling. I cannot begin to imagine what courage it takes, what stamina and strength, to be a woman photographing the ravages of war.

One was Dickey Chapelle who, according to the National Geographic article, attached below, had been working as a war correspondent since 1942 and had reported on dozens of conflicts. She’d been called “the polite little American with all that tiger blood in her veins” by Fidel Castro; held in solitary confinement during the Hungarian uprising; and affirmed as the first correspondent accredited by the Algerian rebels.

She died in 1965 when embedded with a Marine search-and-destroy mission near the coastal city of Chu Lai in Vietnam.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2018/08/world-photography-day-dickey-chapelle-female-war-photographer-combat-vietnam/

Her autobiography, What’s a woman doing here?, is available (for $299.00, I might add) here: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Woman-Reporters-Report-Herself/dp/B0006AXN80

The other photographer was Anja Niedringhaus, who died in 2014 in Afghanistan. The article below describes a strong, cheerful, unflappable woman who was killed by a sniper, ironically, while documenting hopeful preparations for the upcoming elections after years of war in Afghanistan.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/an-obituary-of-german-war-photographer-anja-niedringhaus-a-962995.html

Excerpts from Britten’s War Requiem seems like the appropriate companion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD7n4p-ZfOs

Photographs today are from an abandoned manor house in Tuscany where I traveled in 2016. I believe I have shown some of them before. The Castello was right behind the farm house where I stayed.