Insight with Jonathan Kaplan: Witnessing and Working in War

Jonathan Kaplan, war surgeon, writer and photographer in conversation with
filmmaker James Brabazon, whose war reportage earned him the Rory Peck
Award in 2003.

Jonathan Kaplan has worked as a war surgeon, treating civilians and
sometimes combatants, in Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia.

Some of these conflicts were the focus of much media attention _ Kurdistan
in 1991, Baghdad in 2003. Others, such as Mozambique, Angola, Eritrea and
Burma, ground on in relative obscurity.     

In his time away from the operating table Kaplan recorded his experiences
in journals, film and photographs.

In each case, the role of the surgeon gave for an intimate involvement that
would shape his perspective of war, his relationship with those he was
there to help and the value of the work he was doing.

His books, The Dressing Station (2001) and Contact
Wounds (2006), are records of that journey through war and brutality
towards a process of self-discovery.