The ravages of war are often innumerable. Often times, one has to wonder if the outcome is often worth the effort. Many lives are lost, and it may take years to recuperate from the destruction. Throughout history, the evidence of such obliteration has been recorded through paintings or photography. Here is a look at some of the most prolific images captured through the artists’ eyes.

(The Third of May 1808, 1814)

Painted by Francisco De Goya Y Lucientes, is a timeless moment captured by the artist. Goya acted as a photographer, capturing eye witnessing images of rape, murder, pillaging, and mutilation of the Spanish resistance during the Napoleonic occupation. Compiled in one of these scenes is The Third of May 1808. The painting captures the momentary terror of the victims to be executed, and the split-second before the executioners pull their triggers. The painting is both haunting and a striking passage from life to death, as we see those who wait for their lives to be extinguished, to those who lay before them in a crumpled mass of blood and gruesome corpses.

[Memory of Civil War (The Barricades), 1849]

The actuality of war is nevermore brutally captured than with Ernest Meissonier’s Memory of Civil War. Bodies lay piled in what almost appears like a modern day depiction of the effects of bloodshed. Becoming captain in the National Guard, Meissonier gained first hand accounts of defenders being shot down, thrown from windows, and the earth being riddled with corpses. In his own words, “the earth had not yet drunk up all the blood.”

(The Apotheosis of War, 1871)

In some ways, the image almost beckons the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot or Hitler and the Holocaust and the decimation of innocents. Russian Vassilii Vereshchagin recorded human atrocities of war in the hopes to publicly protest against such genocide. The image is almost symbolic of such human barbarism, that one cannot strike the image from their mind. Even though the image was meant to document the Turkestan wars, the image can certainly be from anytime.

(Autumn Cannibalism, 1936)

Salvador Dali depicted the idea of war as being not a conflict of sides, or the ravages that ensue, but rather the body that wars with itself. Dali had become deeply involved with the Spanish Civil War, and painted Autumn Cannibalism in response to war, and the internal struggle that one must deal with in times of war. The self-destruction that comes from such fighting with one another becomes an analysis of annihilation.

(Guernica, 1937)

Perhaps one of Pablo Picasso’s most prolific pieces is his depiction of the Spanish Civil War. The typical battle imagery portrayed in most scenes of war, instead becomes an obliterated scene of discombobulation. The bull has often been thought to represent Spain, while the horse with the lance rammed through it was thought to represent human suffrage in times of war. Instead of war being a heroic act of preservation of the people, it becomes an act of disparity and self-destruction.

(Atomic Bomb over Nagasaki, 1945)

Since the beginning of photography, the ability to be able to capture images as it happens has never been more surreal. You see the devastation before you, not being able to comprehend or want to believe that it had happened. Yet you have the evidence before you. While the image may not look like much, the destruction behind the cloud says so much more. The image was captured from the American B-29 bomber that dropped the bomb, killing nearly 80, 000 people in Nagasaki.

(The last Jew of Vinnitsa, 1941)

Taken by an unknown photographer, the image epitomizes the innocent lives that were taken in the Holocaust. Such decimation of lives was unnecessary and the image certainly portrays the horror of the time. All 28,000 Jews of Vinnitsa were brutishly murdered by the Nazis, and despite such images being captured in times of war, we as a species still repeat our errors. The picture invokes a sense of revolting disgust at our lack of compassion in times of war.

(Child Soldier of War, Darfur)

The war in Darfur has taken nearly half-a-million lives. In what has to be the most heinous ethnic cleansing seen since the Holocaust, the idea of using children as soldiers in a war that they probably cannot comprehend is egregious. Many children are torn from their families, whereby they will live and die by the gun. The child in the photo seems at a loss, almost knowing that he is no longer a child, and whatever dreams he may have had, no longer exist.

Despite such depictions of war, from past to present, it seems as we as a race are destined to repeat our errors. No matter how devastating, or life altering, no amount of capturing the trauma of war will ever erase what we have become.