I Have Become a War Correspondant

I hate photography. Let’s be honest about it. I am tired of dancing with sin, but the music never ends. We’ll just wheel around the room until I die; that’s when I’ll pay for all the moves. I’ll just spiral and spiral, and shuffle and swirl until the lights are out and it’s time to pay the tab. God, I am a slave. I am little more than a man on a chain. I may wear the suit of a gentleman, but my master is no gentle man. He is a demon; a soul born of curiosity and misintention, refined with lighting and an artistic vision. No, I never meant to end up in hell, but a darkroom and a camera can bring you to places that you wouldn’t imagine.
I was just a boy when I found the film. It was the worst mistake I’d ever make, but boys can’t appreciate foreshadow like a man can. Film and hell, film and hell, film and hell, and film and where I’d soon be. I picked up a camera and photographed what I never should have seen, and now the pictures are too vivid to be thrown away. They have taken on a life of their own; a fabled existence like the plates of the Great War, complete with gas and death and bloated horses and trenches. The pictures are the thing, wherein I caught the depravity of man. That depravity has become embedded in me; my master, my owner, my slaver, and my Satan. Those things never should have been captured in a still frame, save for the curiosity and potential skill of tempted child. Photography is not a lost art, buts its patron’s are lost artists. It took me to the battlefield, where I was never meant to be. It showed me the things that I was never meant to see. Film will someday send me to hell, for that is where my camera points. The rest is history.
And so I’ve become a gentleman. A well dressed, well spoken hypocrite. I pretend that my photos have a point. I can preach against the war with my black and white snapshot commentaries that I publish in the papers, but the work never lies; no, it always holds true. I must enjoy the depravity. The war is a dance. It starts out slow, with well dressed men and their demonic partners. The gunshots are the music, and the men soon see what men were never meant to be. Well dressed men in suits become slaves on chains, with the devil god of photography holding the key. Why do pictures have to be worth a thousand words? The pictures that I have taken are worth a thousand views, and I am doomed to see every single one. I am doomed to document the demise of man, the stunning downfall of every hand. The dance started out slow, but for every viewer it picks up a beat. I first viewed the war at age eleven, that when the music first claimed me. I will dance with the sin of war until all the men are dead, including me.