In his dark room he is finally alone / with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
Duffy sets the scene by describing the setting of the poem. "War Photographer" takes place in a darkroom, where a man is developing his photographs from his experiences on the battlefield. Although he is "finally alone," in a calm environment away from the constant action of the battlefield, he is "with" the photographs—they are developing in front of him and constantly present in his mind, haunting him. The photographs are described as "spools of suffering," which gives us some indication of what they might contain. They are arranged in "ordered rows," invoking a graveyard and also foreshadowing their gruesome content. The word "suffering" is the key word in this quote: it is more abstract than the concrete description of the photographer, and it introduces a key theme throughout the poem, which is the suffering caused by war.
Rural England. Home again / to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel, / to fields which don't explode beneath the feet
In this stanza, Duffy emphasizes the difference between the photographer's current location and his previous position on the battlefield. Here, the photographer is only concerned with everyday worries, rather than the extreme worries of the ground potentially exploding beneath his feet. The speaker describes this pain as "ordinary," suggesting that while the photographer has accepted some level of difficulties and suffering in everyday life, this contrasts with the deeper horrors of war which cannot be "dispel[led]," or banished, by inevitable changes such as changes in the weather. By referencing "weather," Duffy also contrasts natural features of life with the artificial, man-made horrors of war. This builds on the religious theme throughout the poem, suggesting a question of whether God or man is responsible for the centuries of warfare that have periodically plagued the world throughout human existence. She also suggests there is some adjustment when returning home after warfare. While the photographer reflects on being at home, he is quickly reminded by contrast of the dangers that he has faced in his work.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where / he earns his living and they do not care.
The final two lines in the poem, which stand together as a rhyming couplet, reflect the poem's dual themes of the photographer's trauma and his audience's ambivalence. The photographer imagines himself in an "aeroplane" (a British and archaic term for airplane), symbolizing his distance from his audience. The photographer's travels in an airplane also reflect the constant movement and trauma associated with his work: as he lists the multiple war zones he has witnessed in Line 6 ("Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh"), it is implied that these places begin to blur together in his memory of the traumas he has witnessed, as represented by the blurriness of the images he produces. In addition to imagining himself in this symbolic aeroplane, the photographer "stares impassively" out of the plane, symbolizing his role in war as an objective observer who simply documents the atrocities that play out in front of him—a photographer who "earns his living" from making art and news out of suffering. This description has a component of irony, as the poem explores the photographer's emotional experience of his work, belying his supposedly objective role. In a final twist, Duffy notes that the photographer is staring impassively at his own home country, where people "do not care" about the wars occurring abroad. This final line implicates the audience in the photographer's impassivity and contains an implicit call to action to speak or act out against war, rather than passively accepting it.
