When Peter van Agtmael went to Iraq in 2006 to embed with the U.S. military, he was 24 years old and confident that his pictures could help end an unjust war. Two decades later, after documenting combat deaths overseas and then turning his camera lens on America, he's learned the limits of what photography can do. In this episode, Peter talks about the emotional toll of bearing witness to violence, the fraught ethics of choosing a subject, and how he ended up in a legal battle with Ye over an image.

Peter’s book is called “Look at the U.S.A.: A Diary of War and Home,“ and he has a show at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design until January 25th. You can see his 2015 KKK wedding photo here.

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A War Photographer on the Limits of Bearing Witness

Death, Sex & Money

A War Photographer on the Limits of Bearing Witness