Michael Christopher Brown: War Photography with an iPhone at Le Ciminiere

Michael Christopher Brown, born in Skagit Valley in 1978, gained entry to Magnum Photos in 2015 after a failed first attempt in 2013. During the Libyan revolution, his camera broke and he continued shooting with an iPhone, a tool no professional war photographer had used before. He captured Gaddafi's beaten face and was himself wounded. His iPhone images became one of the first smartphone-made reportages published internationally. He later used the iPhone for assignments in Cuba during Fidel Castro's funeral, Congo, Afghanistan, Mexico, Beijing's subway, and Sakhalin Island, reaching covers of The New York Times Review, National Geographic, and Fortune. The first European retrospective of his work, produced by Fondazione OELLE at Le Ciminiere in Catania, features over 200 photographs and a film. Curator Ezio Costanzo describes the images as explicit, brutal, and unmerciful, yet hopeful. The exhibition includes sections on Palestine, America's dispossessed, and Libya, where a blood-stained stretcher resembles a contemporary shroud. The article contrasts Brown with Don McCullin, the 20th-century war photographer, noting Brown's background as a physicist's son versus McCullin's troubled youth. Brown's instinct for war and poetic sensibility coexist without friction.