ALL PHOTOGRAPHS," said British novelist John Berger, "are there to remind us of what we forget."

War is one of those subjects most of us find ourselves choosing to forget. Too painful, too scary, too unknown, too far away — for myriad reasons, we close up our minds to the possibility of war, or, as the future days may have it, the reality of it.

But some know — and have seen — the truth of war. And because of their often life-threatening work, many of us have seen it, too. They are war photographers, and every day, in every ravaged, embattled country, they are there, taking pictures, so that we are reminded.

Now, photographer Peter Howe has compiled the work of 10 of the world’s best war photographers in Shooting Under Fire: The World of the War Photographer (Artisan Books). Howe, who covered wars in Northern Ireland and El Salvador, is an award-winning photojournalist who subsequently worked as picture editor of the New York Times Magazine and as director of photography for Life magazine. The pictures he’s assembled in Shooting Under Fire run the gamut, from morgues in Sarajevo to the streets of Haiti, the battlefields of Vietnam to the ashes of the collapsed World Trade Center. And it is unlikely that we, after seeing them, will forget.

Q: Why’d you decide to put the book together?

A: There were a variety of reasons. One was that I’ve always enjoyed being with photographers and listening to photographers’ stories, and these guys have had such extraordinary lives that they have extraordinary stories; they go to extraordinary places and see sights that your average Joe won’t see in three lifetimes, so I felt that those stories would be fascinating for a wider audience. You know, when you pick up your morning paper and see a picture from Chechnya on the front page — [most people] would not realize what it takes for that picture to be taken, and delivered to the newspaper. And just the sheer survival; most people don’t even think about, well, if you go to Chechnya, there’s no hotels, there’s no supermarkets, there’s no taxis, there’s no restaurants. Just surviving under those circumstances is really a challenge.

The other thing I think was a very important part of it was that there is a lot of romance that is often associated with war, and I think this book — I hope it does — really shatters the kind of romance side of war, and that what it does do is to hopefully give the reader a more realistic view of what war really is like, and what people experience in war.

Q: Do you hope the book acts as a kind of deterrent to war, then?

A: I don’t think the job of the book is to be pro-war or antiwar, and in many ways I don’t really think that the job of the war photographers is — I mean, I’m sure there are many of them who are antiwar, but I don’t think that’s necessarily their job of proselytizing an antiwar point of view. We’re in a situation now where once again we’ve taken the decision to send young men and women into the battlefield, to fight on our behalf, and I think that the more informed people are about the circumstances under which many of these people will be fighting ... really, it’s the responsibility of all of us to really understand what it is we’re doing when we say "go to war." So to me, it’s neither an antiwar book or a pro-war book; it is a book that I hope gives a very realistic impression of the realities of war.

Q: How did you choose which photographers to feature in the book?

A: Well, in my time as both director of photography at Life and the picture editor at the New York Times Magazine, I knew most of these guys. I think there were only two out of them that I didn’t know very well. And I had heard some of the stories. Although I must say, even being an "insider" in this kind of world, I was surprised by the stories that came out. And I was also very moved and impressed by the degree of honesty and the degree of frankness that they offered to me. As I say, eight out of the 10 I knew; I’d never worked with Laurent Van der Stockt, who’s the young Belgian photographer who’s based in Paris. But I was talking to some people about doing this book, and they said, "Boy, if you’re going to do this, you really have to interview Laurent," partly because his work is extraordinary, and also because he’s been wounded twice, and the second time was actually a career-ending wound.

Q: Talk to me about some of the reasons a person would choose to put themselves literally in the line of fire to do this.

A: There are a variety of things. First of all, war makes for good pictures. Good pictures in the terms that you’re dealing with the extremes of human experience, you’re dealing with the extremes of human emotion, and you are in situations which are dramatic. War is absolutely elemental, it’s often monumental; all of these contrive to produce extremely powerful images. And also, we have to admit that war is one of the basic behavioral patterns of the human race, so it’s an important theme for people to photograph. I think that that’s one level; the other level is, it’s exciting, and I don’t think you can dismiss that part of it, and in fact these guys don’t; they talk about how when you’ve survived another day, you get this incredible feeling of being alive. You’re living on adrenaline while you’re there.

I covered two wars, the civil war in Northern Ireland and the civil war in El Salvador. I hated being there. I absolutely hated being there. I did not want to be there, I had a sore throat from the moment I went in till the moment I left, it just was not the kind of environment I really loved being in. But even I have to admit that once you’ve done it, there is a sort of — there’s a real charge. You feel so alive. You feel every part of your body is functioning at an incredibly high degree of efficiency. And one of the things that all the photographers talk about is the difficulty of coming back from that kind of a situation into what we would call "normal life." Because, you know, you and I would expect to survive this day. We expect to live out this week and have fun at the weekend or whatever it is. But these guys, with them, survival is on an hour-to-hour basis. Sometimes on a minute-to-minute basis. And because of that, it sort of changes the nature of survival; survival itself becomes a much more precious commodity than you and I feel it is in our lives. And a much more kind of transient quality as well.

The other part of this, why people do it, is because all of the people in Shooting Under Fire really do believe it’s important to witness these events, and to record these events. There are some photographers who believe that photography will never, ever change, human nature will never, ever change people’s attitude to war, and indeed shouldn’t really be required to, because if politicians and diplomats can’t prevent wars, why should photography? But I think they all believe that there is an absolute need to have a record of it, and that it’s important. Revisionist historians find it much harder to deny the Holocaust because of the photography that Margaret Bourke-White did at the liberation of Belsen than they would if she hadn’t done it, or if somebody hadn’t done it. I think on that basis, all of these photographers think it’s extremely important to provide that kind of witness. And indeed, Ron Haviv’s photographs are being used as evidence by the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague in some of the cases that they’re bringing against the Serbian warlords.

Q: What kind of personality do you think it takes to be a war photographer?

A: I think you have to be very brave and a little bit nuts. Because this is not a normal way of living. I think these people — they are very brave, clearly — I think they’re people who don’t like living in the center of society; they feel more comfortable on the outer edges of society. Which is not to say they’re sociopaths at all — they’re very charming, very entertaining people, but I think they’re people who do not relish living normal lives. Although, having said that, there is a very, very high burnout rate amongst these people. I mean, Don McCullen, who is probably one of the best war photographers of the 20th century, he now spends his time photographing the landscapes in Somerset, England, around his home. Christopher Morris said that he wanted to stop shooting war because of his daughter, so he’s mostly spending his time covering the White House for Time. So there is a burnout. But there are also people like Jim Nachtwey and Patrick Chauvel who’ve been doing it for over 20 years and are still doing it, still going back, still involved in it, and still feel it’s important.

Q: There’s always controversy when a magazine or newspaper publishes a photo that’s considered too graphic or too bloody. What are your thoughts on what should be printed and what shouldn’t? Is there ever a time to draw the line?

A: I think there is a line, which is so hard to define, between legitimate reporting and the presentation of legitimate information, and gratuitous violence. There is absolutely that line. It’s a line that is so hard to define when you’re actually in a situation where people are shooting at you or whatever. I remember there was an instance in my own career, when we were in El Salvador — there were a bunch of us going around, and we found this bus which had been shot up, and beside it there was a body of somebody who probably was a police informer or somebody that had been taken off the bus, and he had been executed; somebody had stuck a pistol in his mouth and shot out the back of his head. I photographed the empty, shot-up bus with his body lying beside it, and then as you do when you’re photographing, you sort of move around, and I realized at some point I was actually photographing the interior of his empty skull, and somebody said to me, "Peter, who do you think is going to publish that photograph?" And they were right. That was gratuitous. To photograph the bus with the body beside it was absolutely a legitimate, necessary thing to do. To move around and photograph the inside of his skull was completely gratuitous. But it’s very hard to make those decisions when you’re actually in the field.

A companion view to that is that I also am extremely sensitive to being told what it is I should see and what I shouldn’t see, and I think that there’s a photograph in the book which is a prime example of that, which is a picture that Ken Jarecke took of a charred body of an Iraqi soldier during the last Gulf War. That was pulled off the AP wire because the AP people thought it was too graphic for the American public. It was published, actually, a lot in Europe, which is interesting. But to me, that is what war is about; that’s your tax dollars at work. That’s what we’re talking about. The most dramatic pictures we saw coming out of the Gulf War were pictures from the heads of the so-called smart bombs. But war gets reduced to almost like a kind of video game if you present it like that. The problem is, the American public has been probably too shielded, and I think that September 11 made a monumental difference to the psyche of the American public. Again, do you show pictures of people jumping out of the upper stories of the World Trade Center? Is that gratuitous, or is that information?

Q: To your mind, what is it?

A: I think it’s information, because I think that it’s a really powerful representation of the horror of the last hours of those people’s lives. That ordinary, normal, not depressed, not psychologically disturbed people should choose to jump out of a window rather than stay where they are, that’s very powerful to me.

Q: What have been the effects of September 11 on war photography?

A: I don’t think that it’s had any effect on war photography. I think war photographers, people who actually volunteer to do this — and indeed pretty much I think without exception, everyone’s a volunteer, people don’t get ordered to go to Bosnia or Chechnya, it is a voluntary situation — you know, those guys know what war is about; they’ve been there, they’ve done it, they understand what they’re dealing with. I think the difference it made was absolutely on the psyche of the American public. See, I think if the American public had been better informed about the reality of war, about the reality of terrorism, than maybe it wouldn’t have been as traumatic. I mean, clearly to have that happen anywhere, and to have those kinds of casualties and all of that, is going to be a traumatic situation. But I think people were so unprepared for it, so unprepared for that kind of loss of life on the heart of American soil. I was born and brought up in Britain, and I think Europeans have a much more realistic view of war, because unfortunately they’ve had much more of it. When I grew up, we played in bomb sites — that was our playground. They were places where people had been killed. And you talk to Frenchmen or Germans or whoever, they have a much more realistic approach to war and understanding of war.

Q: Our newspaper caused a lot of controversy when we published a link, on our Web site, to the video of Daniel Pearl’s execution. Our publisher felt very strongly that it was something people needed to see. Would you have supported that decision?

A: I don’t know. For one reason, I haven’t seen that tape, so I don’t know exactly what the consequence is. I certainly applaud that kind of courage, to make the decision to do that. And in many ways, I think it’s the ... I think it’s why you do it, what the intentions are, are the important factor there.

Q: And intentions are hard to prove.

A: Absolutely hard to prove. And also are not really apparent; any reader, who then logged onto that, wouldn’t necessarily understand the intentions, or would misinterpret the intentions, so it’s very complicated. I think one of the things that the interviews in Shooting Under Fire really bring out to me is how difficult making these kinds of ethical decisions, under the kinds of circumstances that people are going to have to make those ethical decisions — it’s very complex, and it’s very hard to say somebody’s right or somebody’s wrong. I think if it’s treated like some kind of grotesque snuff video, then that is gratuitous. If it’s put within a journalistic framework, in which the intention is to give a real sense of what war photographers, war correspondents, have to go through, then I think that’s probably legitimate.

You know, we talk about the effect that 9/11 has had on war photography or on the psyche of the American people — I think Daniel Pearl’s execution had an equal effect, both on war photographers and on the American public, because I think the American public really did begin to realize this is a dangerous and difficult job. I think the correspondents and photographers had yet another indication that there are no front lines now. War is everywhere. During the First World War, you could go to the front line, shoot your heart out either as a photographer or as a soldier, and then leave and go back to have a nice dinner in a restaurant 20 miles away. My wife is a journalist, and she covered the Six-Day War in 1967 in Israel, and they would take a taxi to the front. That doesn’t happen now. The taxi is going to be as big a target as the front, so that’s why it’s made it much more dangerous, in many ways, to cover the kind of conflicts that they’re now having to cover.

Q: I was wondering that — how has war photography changed as war itself has changed?

A: War has changed radically in the 20th century. Inasmuch as up until I think probably the First World War, for the most part, being a civilian in war was safe; you weren’t a victim, you weren’t in any way a target. Now it’s come to the point where in many of the conflicts we’re looking at now, civilians are in many ways more important targets than military targets. That’s the way war’s changed, and the way that covering war has changed is that you cannot get away from it while you’re there. That was one of the things I hated about being in Northern Ireland or El Salvador: you cannot get away from it. You cannot go out, you can’t go to the movies, you can’t go and have dinner, you’re pretty much trapped in your hotel for the time that you’re there — and that’s in an area that does have hotels. And I think it increases not only the danger but the stress that photographers are under as well.

Q: What’s your advice to a photographer who perhaps is getting on a plane tomorrow to go to Iraq?

A: Clearly, when the conflict breaks out, as it seems almost inevitable to do now, the Pentagon is going to exercise at least the same if not more kind of control over the photographers, so your freelance photographer is going to have a very hard time getting access to the fields of action anyway.

One of the biggest problems we have with this kind of photography is that a lot of young photographers think they can make their name from going to war and getting that one dramatic photograph. And indeed it has happened, and people do — Don McCullen made his name covering the civil war in Cyprus as a very young photographer — and the problem is, it’s just the same as with regular soldiers: the soldiers who get killed first are the ones who are the least experienced in that kind of environment. And the photographers who get killed the first are exactly the same. So my advice to a young photographer going to shoot war for the first time is, first of all, really try and think and understand why it is you’re going. If you’re going to make your name, don’t go. If you’re going because you have this real, burning conviction that this is something which you have to do, well then, go, but do what smart soldiers do, which is stick with the veterans. Do what the veterans do. Do not vary [from] what the veterans do one iota until you yourself have enough experience to be able to make decisions that you are incapable of making at the moment. There was a guy in El Salvador, a young man from New Jersey, who got, if you can believe it, an assignment to go to El Salvador from Screw magazine, and he went down there, and he did something as simple as staying in the wrong hotel in San Salvador. All of us, when we went down there, would stay in the Camino Real, which was the press hotel. And he stayed in the Sheraton, which was owned by one of the extreme right-wing paramilitary guys. This young man disappeared, and no trace has been found of him since then. That is the kind of danger that inexperienced photographers face when going into these kinds of areas.

Q: Now that you’re done working on the book, do you ever just want to look at lighthearted photos for a while?

A: Oh yes, I love looking at lighthearted photos! Absolutely. We’re talking about what we’re going to do as the next book, and certainly, probably the next book will be more lighthearted than this. And I think it’s absolutely the role of photography to show the humor of life, and to make us feel good about being human beings on this planet as well. So yeah, absolutely.

But on the other hand, one of the things that really was interesting to me — I’ve been in this business for a long while, and you get to a point where you think, oh God, I’m so fed up with looking at photographs. And then you do something like this, and you realize that the power of the still image, the power of photography, is something which is still there, still affects you, still intrigues you, and still fascinates you. And that was a reaffirmation of why I got into this business in the first place.

Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com.