Summary
In the third stanza, the photograph has been processed and becomes clearer, which invokes more emotions in the photographer. As the chemical solution and darkroom allow the negatives to develop, the images that the photographer captured take form. The pictures are not totally developed, causing the “stranger” depicted to look like a “half-formed ghost.” Seeing the stranger in the picture reminds the photographer of the painful moment when he took the picture. It is implied that the stranger died in the war, in an attack or possibly an explosion. The stranger’s wife cried and the photographer silently “sought approval” to document this moment as “blood stained” the ground of the warzone.
Analysis
The vague introductory sentence “[s]omething is happening” marks a shift between the first two stanzas and the third stanza. The first two stanzas are backwards-looking, interweaving descriptions of the darkroom with the photographer’s memories of his experiences. In the third stanza, the photographs begin actively developing, which prompts the photographer to reflect on new, specific memories. By using the photograph as a tunnel into the photographer’s memories, Duffy creates an opportunity to use two modes of description: external and internal. The reader can externally observe the “half-formed ghost” of the stranger in the photograph; they can also note the photographer’s internal memory of the war scene, when he took a photograph of the stranger being attacked and “blood stain[ing] into foreign dust.” Unlike the previous two stanzas, which focus on the photographer’s internal memories, the third stanza demonstrates how those memories emerge in the photograph, and how trauma results in the photographer’s memories blurring with the current image.
The photographer describes the subject of the picture as a “stranger,” creating a sense of distance between himself and the picture. While the subject likely truly was a stranger to the photographer in the sense that he did not know him outside of this particular war scene, by using this specific word Duffy achieves two purposes. First, she reflects the alienation of both the photographer as an artist and his audience from the conflict he photographs. Throughout the text, although the photographer uses proper nouns to specifically identify three war zones that he has photographed, he does not identify his subjects or where they are, instead using vague noun such as “children,” “stranger’s,” and “man’s wife.”
Finally, this stanza builds on the theme of trauma and the horrors of war. The stranger is described as a “ghost,” which literally refers to the blurriness of the image but also symbolizes the stranger’s death. Words like “ghost,” “cries,” and “blood” invoke the intensity of the memory and the photographer’s lingering trauma. The stanza also connects with prior stanzas to create a cohesive connection between trauma and religion. The Bible verse in the first stanza, “All flesh is grass,” applies to the stranger’s death, but Duffy adds a twist on this by referring to the “foreign dust,” contrasting this with the grass in the first stanza—suggesting that the Bible verse is not enough to explain the photographer’s deep trauma, as “grass” has transformed into “dust.” Similarly, the image of blood “stain[ing]” the dust invokes stained glass, but inverts this image of beautiful stained glass into horrific blood-stained dust.
