The Feast of the Arms Industry, and More Eye Candy

Photo: Nikita Teryoshin

Nikita Teryoshin’s photos from arms fairs satirize invisible weapon bazaars. In our latest video, we analyze his delicious photos and contrast them with how the media treats military hardware imagery.

By Michael Shaw

Canapés and Cruise Missiles? Petits fours meet purveyors of war? Before asking what to make of the arms market, the question is, where are they hiding it?

In the media, arms sales are normalized as commercial news or geopolitical necessity. The focus on deadly cost is primarily tied in with war reporting, and the more extensive discussion of the morality of weapons, like the topic of arms control, is essentially off the table. Meanwhile, the fact the Ukrainians are starving for armaments to protect democracy while the Israelis bombard Gaza into oblivion, enabled by $3 billion yearly in U.S. military assistance, creates a cognitive dissonance that only provides more cover for the industry.

Weapon bazaars remain largely invisible. On the other hand, the weapons of death—the hardware fetishized with the cool and the sensuality of sports cars or iPhones— flood the media in slick recruitment ads, stadium flyovers, political photo-ops, news photo galleries, and more.

So when do we ever see the poison beyond the utilitarian or awesome?

In our latest edition of Chatting the Pictures, we look at Nikita Teryoshin’s work. The photo is not new, but it couldn’t be more timely. It shows a VIP reception at a Swedish booth at an arms fair in Kielce, Poland, in 2016. Teryoshin spent eight years traveling to defense shows worldwide, capturing the surreal ways weapons are bought and sold. The imagery is certainly worth revisiting in his new photo book, “Nothing Personal – The Back Office of War.”

The Video

Chatting the Pictures features Cara Finnegan and Michael Shaw and is produced by Liliana Michelena. These 3-4 minute videos give an essential news or documentary photo a close read, complemented by related imagery. You can see the archive on our legacy website and recent examples on our Instagram feed.

In the video, Cara and I break down the satire of this and other Teryoshin photos, noting how the lampooning cuts all the deeper because these arms expos evade public radar. We focus on the juxtaposition of firepower and finger food, the odd melding of man and machine, the surreal fetishizing of weaponry, and how these lavish displays reveal the military-industrial complex’s voracious hunger for power and profitability.

After you take the Teryoshin tour, check out these photos from a rare article about the arms industry, “Middle East War Adds to Surge in International Arms Sales,” published recently by the N.Y. Times. With the weapons manufacturers only too happy to see editorial photos that make our eyes glaze over, it’s a lot easier to appreciate how anodyne these images feel—the spanking white Boeing factory or the soldier at the arms fair—on the heels of Teryoshin’s imagery.

Workers building an F-15 fighter jet at a Boeing factory in St. Louis. Worldwide military spending hit $2.2 trillion last year. Photo: Bryan Birks for The New York Times

Boeing’s facilities in St. Louis. The company predicted that a larger share of its revenues and profits will come from international arms sales. Photo: Bryan Birks for The New York Times

South Korea’s Chunmoo missile system was on display at the military show in Poland. Photo: Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times

Boeing’s facilities in St. Louis. The company predicted that a larger share of its revenues and profits will come from international sales. Bryan Birks for The New York Times

Or, if you want a more extreme juxtaposition, there is this shot from the N.Y. Times article of Israeli soldiers “preparing to move a tank” (no mention of the artillery shell in the caption).

Israeli soldiers preparing to move a tank toward Gaza last week. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is just the latest impetus behind a boom in international arms sales. Photo: Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

If the image doesn’t trouble you just for the number of pictures like this one normalized in countless news stories since last October, at least the photo conjures up a lot more than the glowing health of the international arms trade.

The Slide Show—Emphasis on “Show”

What is especially hard for me to digest is the military eye candy that constantly appears in news photo galleries and pictures of the week.

To give you a taste, these two stunningly gorgeous examples of mil-porn appeared in the same CNN feature, The Week in 32 Photos, on Mar 4.

The South Korean Air Force’s Black Eagles aerobatics team performs at an air show in Pampanga, Philippines, on Sunday, March 3. Photo: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

The northern lights are seen above British fighter jets parked on the HMS Prince of Wales, an aircraft carrier near the coast of Norway, on Sunday, March 3. Photo: U.K. Ministry of Defense/AP

You might also notice how the second shot came from the U.K. Ministry of Defense, so the AP didn’t even have to pay for it.