Christine Spengler saw beyond the violence

 

Introduction

This blog is about Christine Spengler, the fifth of eight female war photographers featured in the ‘Women at the Front Line’ exhibition in The Hague. Following Catherine Leroy and Françoise Demulder, who are also French, the perspective shifts again. While Catherine Leroy captured the fighting itself from close range, and Françoise Demulder approached the human consequences of war with distance, calm and composition, Christine Spengler developed a visual language focusing primarily on how women and children survive in war. She focuses on the ways in which they carry on, care, mourn and persevere. 

The more I study the work and lives of these photographers, the clearer it becomes how different their approaches were. At the same time, they all shared a fundamental experience: they had to fight for recognition in a male-dominated field of journalism—to be taken seriously, to gain access to conflict zones and to have their images published.

The start of her career as a photographer

Christine Spengler was born in 1945. She first encountered war directly in 1970 in Chad, when she and her brother witnessed the Toubou uprising.

Using a camera borrowed from her brother, who was a fashion photographer, she began to capture the events. This was not based on a preconceived plan or training, but rather a direct involvement in what was happening before her eyes.

The situation was dangerous. Both she and her brother were briefly imprisoned on suspicion of espionage. During this period, she made a decision that would shape the rest of her life: she wanted to use her camera to give a voice to the world’s oppressed as she called them. Like Catherine Leroy and Françoise Demulder, she was self-taught. Her desire to capture the world’s sorrow — a sorrow that resonated with her own inner loss — consciously brought her to the side of the marginalized.

Christine Spengler quickly learned what war photography entailed: being present, taking risks and having strong nerves. However, she avoided sensationalism and the macabre. Instead, she focused on the dignity and resilience of people who had to survive in extreme circumstances. However fragile it may have been, hope remained an essential element in her images.

Formative influences

Christine Spengler was born in France but grew up in Madrid with her uncle and aunt from the early 1950s onwards. Her parents were divorced. She regularly visited the Prado with her aunt, where she became familiar with the works of Velázquez and Francisco Goya.

Goya’s ‘Los Desastres de la Guerra’ made a deep impression on her. Christine Spengler later referred to Goya as her master because of the way he depicted the horrors of war without heroism or redemption.

She studied French and Spanish literature, initially aspiring to become a writer. At the same time, she spent a lot of time in Madrid’s churches, where she became fascinated by the Mourning Madonnas: adorned with jewels, suffering, theatrical and intensely present. Images of faith, horror, mourning and ritual — in short, visual drama — became embedded in her vision from an early age.

Break

In 1973, her brother took his own life. This event marked a turning point in her life. Christine Spengler later described how she lost her sense of color, explaining that she wore only black for years. On the battlefield, she wore neither a helmet nor a bulletproof vest. Not out of bravado, but out of indifference to her own survival. She was not afraid of death — she even sought it out. This existential attitude — living with death constantly at hand — ran like an undercurrent through her work as a war photographer.

Her work as a war photographer

Christine Spengler worked as a war photographer for more than thirty years, repeatedly finding herself in areas where violence dominated daily life. In 1972, she travelled to Northern Ireland to document the civil war there. This marked the start of her extensive reporting from conflict zones worldwide, including Vietnam (1973–1974), Cambodia (1974), Lebanon (1982–1984), Kurdistan (1983), Nicaragua (1980–1981), El Salvador (1981), Western Sahara (1976–1979), Kosovo (1997), Afghanistan (1997), Iran (1979) and Iraq (2003).

Her photographs were distributed by major press agencies, including the Associated Press, Sygma and Sipa, and were published in prominent international media outlets such as Life, Paris Match, Time, Newsweek, El País, The New York Times and Le Monde. However, her work is not about the spectacle of war. Instead, Christine Spengler used her camera to capture how people cling to everyday life amid chaos and violence: survival, care, mourning and carrying on. You can get an idea of her work here.

Image description

When I look at Christine Spengler’s photographs, I see both vulnerability and resilience. Her images show ordinary activities continuing, even when violence threatens to overshadow everything.

Christine Spengler paid particular attention to women and children. She demonstrated that women are not merely victims, but frequently play an active role in conflict situations, whether as caregivers, fighters or silent bearers of continuity.

Children also play a central role in her work. They are forced to grow up with weapons as a natural part of their environment and, in some conflicts, they even become involved in the violence. Christine Spengler was touched not only by their vulnerability, but also by their resilience. Despite the constant threat, her photos capture moments of play, intimacy and a zest for life. It is precisely this contradiction — life amid destruction — that gives her work a layered tension. Her work is not about the spectacle of war. Seeing the determination to carry on and preserve humanity, even in the most hopeless circumstances, gave her hope.

Learning to celebrate Life again

The events in Christine Spengler’s life — the suicide of her brother, Éric, and the war suffering she witnessed — meant that she was unable to celebrate life for a long time. However, that changed after she was arrested by the Sunni Islamic militia Al-Mourabitoun in Beirut in 1982. They suspected her of espionage and did not understand what she was doing there. She was blindfolded and tied up, then taken away.

Christine Spengler later described this as the only moment in her career when she truly believed she was going to die. Ultimately, she convinced her captors of her identity as a French photojournalist by showing them her press documents and mentioning her work for agencies such as Sipa Press and Sygma. She was released. It was precisely this direct confrontation with death that brought about a shift: paradoxically, it reopened her eyes to the beauty and preciousness of life.

Transition to a different kind of work

The mission in Iraq in 2003 is often regarded as one of Christine Spengler’s final major assignments as an active war photographer. After that, she increasingly shifted her focus to artistic work, distancing herself from direct reporting on conflict. She developed a technique involving photomontages, which she described as a form of exorcism — a way of processing the traumatic images she had seen over thirty years of war.

These artistic works stand in sharp contrast to her serious and respectful black-and-white war photography. While her journalistic images are restrained and observational, her later work is distinctly baroque, colorful and symbolic.

Evident influences from her childhood include the surrealism of her mother, the artist Huguette Spengler, and the dramatic visual language of masters such as Goya and Velázquez. In these pieces, life returns — not as a denial of the violence endured, but as a counterforce.

Fashion

Christine Spengler only collaborated with the fashion industry on one occasion. Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s first female creative director, asked the renowned war photographer to take the backstage photographs for the Autumn/Winter 2018 collection. Spengler paid tribute to the 1968 student protests by portraying the models as a marching unit. Watch an interview with Christine Spengler about this event here. 

Awards and recognition

Femme de l’Année (2002): Awarded in Brussels in recognition of her decades-long career reporting from conflict zones such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Lebanon.

Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (2006): She received this prestigious title in recognition of her artistic achievements.

Medalla de Oro (2006): She was awarded a gold medal by the municipality of San Antonio de Portmany in Ibiza, where she was also named ‘residente ilustre’.

Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (2009): She was awarded France’s highest national honor in recognition of her unique contribution to photography and her decades of work as a female war photographer.

The Prix Roger-Pic (SCAM) (1998): She won this prize from the Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia in Paris for her impressive project, ‘Femmes dans la guerre’ (Women in War).

Documentary awards: A documentary about her life, ‘Les guerres de Christine S.’ (2018), has won several awards. In Málaga, the film won two important awards: the jury prize for best documentary in its section and the audience award. 

In 2020, she was also honored as the ‘marraine’ (patroness) of the ‘Les femmes ‘s exposent’ festival.

 

PUBLICATIONS

Une femme dans la guerre (1970–1991): An autobiographical account of her career as a war photographer. This is the original French edition, published by Éditions Ramsay in 1991. The book focuses on her experiences from her first photographs in Chad to the early 1990s. Later editions cover the period 1970–2005. 

 

Christine Spengler: Entre la luz y la sombra. Autobiografía de una corresponsal de guerra (1999): An account of her career as a war photographer. This is the Spanish edition, published by El País-Aguilar. Although it contains largely the same autobiographical content as ‘Une femme dans la guerre’, this version was released eight years later specifically for the Spanish market. Some bibliographies also refer to this Spanish edition as a translation or edited version of the original 1991 edition. 

Années de guerre (2003): An overview of her most significant war reporting. 

Vierges et Toreros (2003): This book explores her fascination with Spanish culture, particularly bullfighting and religious iconography. 

 

Ibiza y Formentera Eternas (2010): A publication about the Balearic Islands, the setting of her childhood. 

Luces y Sombras (2010): This visual biography, released to coincide with major exhibitions in 2010 (such as at the Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente), explores the duality of her life between death and beauty. 

L’Opéra du monde (2016): A catalogue published to coincide with her retrospective exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.  

Série Indochinoise – Hommage à Marguerite Duras (2017): An artistic tribute to writer Marguerite Duras, captured in Vietnam and Cambodia. Christine Spengler presents her double exhibition, which took place in October 2018 at the Philippe and Chantal Artidor gallery in Duras, Lot-et-Garonne — the village of Marguerite Dumas. 

Pêle-mêle (year unknown): A collection of her more personal and artistic photo collages. Watch Christine Spengler discuss these new creations via this Museum TV link.

 

FINALLY

Christine Spengler is an extraordinary woman. She is not only a photographer, but also an artist. While her earlier black-and-white photographs showed the ‘dark side’ of the world, her more recent work uses color and montage to restore the ‘flame of hope’ and the beauty of life. Through these baroque, colorful images, she attempts to dispel pain and suffering, including her own. If you would like to see more of her work, you can do so via the Nikon France link.

This has turned out to be a long blog post, but there was so much to say about Christine Spengler’s dedication, commitment, development and creativity. Reading about her inspires me to keep going, no matter how challenging the current circumstances may be.

Immersing myself in the life and work of Christine Spengler has once again shown me how closely personal history, moral choices and visual language are intertwined. Her photography is rooted in closeness, loss and the constant confrontation of death, yet simultaneously seeks traces of hope and beauty. You can find her website here.

NEXT BLOG 

The perspective shifts again in my next blog. Susan Meiselas is an American documentary photographer and a contemporary of Christine Spengler. She worked in conflict zones during the same period, but she had a different background and a different photographic approach. While Spengler’s work is strongly influenced by her personal existential experiences, Meiselas explores power relations, representation and the photographer’s position within the narrative.

She first gained recognition for her poignant images of war-torn Nicaragua in the 1970s, but her work extends beyond conflict. Her early series on American carnival strippers also reveals her perspective on visibility, identity, and agency. Comparing these two photographers — their choices, perspectives and involvement — sheds new light on what it means to work as a woman in a field long dominated by men.

Johanna, 26 January 2026