Representing the Falklands Conflict in Words and Pictures

Abstract

The Falklands conflict was particularly remote and direct individual experience correspondingly rare. At the same time public interest in the conflict was intense. The events of the South Atlantic raise a number of important questions about the extent to which a distant confict can be ‘represented’. Even at a very basic level of representation, it is clear that the facts cannot speak for themselves: without context bare facts can be misleading. In art and photography, it becomes obvious that representations are shaped according to pre-existing patterns. And like all previous conflicts, the Falklands War saw the projection of heroic narratives, recalling representations of previous conflicts.