Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan
A 12-part LRC series, featuring text and iPhone Hipstamatic photography
In early 2011, award-winning photographer Rita Leistner was embedded with a U.S. marine battalion deployed to Helmand province as a member of Project Basetrack, an experiment in using new technologies in social media to extend traditional war reporting. This new LRC series draws on Leistner’s remarkable iPhone photos and her writings from her time in Afghanistan to use the ideas of Marshall McLuhan to make sense of what she saw there – “to examine the face of war through the extensions of man.”
Read the series at appghanistan.reviewcanada.ca. Entries include (in order):
Introduction – The Process
iProbe 1 – The iPhone and the Hipstamatic App
iProbe 2 – Body Armour
iProbe 3 – MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) Vehicles
iProbe 4 – Figure/Ground
iProbe 5 – Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) Made of Wood
iProbe 6 – Fuel Dispensers
iProbe 7 – Loudspeakers and Sermons from the Mosque
iProbe 8 – Can You Hear Me Now?
iProbe 9 – The Written Word – Proceed At Your Own Risk
iProbe 10 – Reaper and Predator Drones
iProbe 11 – Sandbags and HESCO Concertina Barriers