Despite the growing number of talented scholars writing on the intersection of visual culture and US foreign policy, it remains a challenge to trace the precise impact of media on diplomacy. In his new book, Liam Kennedy largely avoids discussion of the ways in which war photography shaped specific US diplomatic policies. Overall, this choice benefits the focus and flow of Afterimages. Using a diverse and compelling collection of individual subjects, Kennedy instead traces how combat photojournalists became interested in particular conflicts, and the political, military, and aesthetic factors behind their creation of powerful photographic documents. Highlighting the aesthetic, cultural, and political significance of war photography from Vietnam to the present, Afterimages emphasizes the power of combat photographs to shape popular perceptions of America's global conflicts.

At its core, Afterimages argues for a shifting “symptomatic relationship” between photojournalism and American military power (2). Within this framework, photojournalism helps to visualize US foreign relations and the nation's place within the international system. Although the argument that visual culture helps to influence public conceptions of diplomatic policy is not new, Kennedy's effort to apply it across fifty years and a variety of very different conflicts raises some fascinating and fresh ideas. Additionally, for a book focussed on the brutality and suffering of individuals in combat zones, Afterimages is both highly readable and engaging. However, the arguments in this already powerful book could be strengthened through the use of documentary evidence from agencies including the State Department and USIA charting the actual impact of specific photographers and photographs on US foreign policy.

Told through the experiences of individual photojournalists, Afterimages argues forcefully for a connection between war photography and prevailing images of American-style liberal democracy. Kennedy's focus on individual photojournalists is absorbing, and certainly strengthens his arguments both by humanizing the role of combat photojournalists and by distilling small sections of vast, sprawling conflicts into relatable biographies. Intriguingly, many of the war photographers reviewed in Afterimages are not American. Their work, though, helped generate visual meanings of US foreign policies through publication in media including glossy art books and magazines such as Newsweek, Life, and Time.

For evidence, Kennedy primarily relies on interpretations of combat photography from the Vietnam War, revolutionary conflicts in the decolonizing world, several humanitarian interventions, and the war on terror. He defines photography as a “universal language,” with a unique ability to connect policies to culture (5). Straddling the disciplines of American studies, diplomatic history, and cultural history, Afterimages explores the ways in which photojournalism creates meaning, along with the shifting relationships between photojournalists and the American armed forces. It is here that Kennedy's decision to examine fifty years of American conflicts pays dividends. By surveying such an expansive period, he is able to compare the role, power, and reach of photojournalists across wars of very different sorts. He also uses this breadth to identify two distinct periods in photographic history: pre-9/11 and post-9/11.

Kennedy's writing on the war on terror is particularly powerful. He emphasizes the differences between earlier conflicts and America's post-9/11 wars, and suggests that the war on terror may be “unrepresentable” (161). As a result, combat photography may no longer possess the power to illuminate the true toll of this conflict. This suggestion is part of his larger analysis of post-9/11 politics and culture, which he depicts as a unique combination of perpetual war, “formalized media restraints,” and “collective forms of disavowal” among the American public (161). It is this combination that hampers contemporary war photography, rendering it unable to assign meaning to a vast, diffuse, and poorly defined conflict.

Afterimages prioritizes aesthetic evaluations of war photography, rather than interpretations of diplomatic documents or other government materials. It therefore invites follow-up studies from scholars of US diplomacy and culture. These scholars might use government documents to illustrate how, if at all, agencies including the State Department and USIA reacted to the publication of war photographs in middlebrow media and more rarefied art publications. Such an analysis would strengthen Kennedy's already compelling arguments by connecting photojournalism directly to American diplomatic policies. It would, as an example, be fascinating to learn whether the work of non-American photojournalists in Vietnam shaped perspectives of the Vietnam conflict among American policymakers and propagandists. It is not a criticism of Afterimages to propose these related studies. Rather, it is to emphasize the richness of Kennedy's subject matter, and his admirable focus on specific photographic images.

Afterimages is a significant contribution to the study of how art, media, and diplomacy act upon each other, and the power of still images to give meaning to conflict. It is an intriguing and absorbing work, relevant to scholars of American studies, visual culture, military history, and US foreign relations. Its subject matter is doubtless of interest to laypeople and activists across a variety of disciplines as well. Kennedy's extensive use of academic language and theory may make Afterimages a daunting read for nonspecialists, but those willing to invest the time and effort will be well rewarded with a clearer understanding of how photojournalism works to shape popular understandings of America's global conflicts and liberal democracy.