The MH17 crash images show us what war in Europe looks like in 2014 | Jonathan Jones

Rightly, picture editors chose not to show some photos taken at the site. The wreckage itself communicates all we need to know

Picture editors selection of Malaysia Airlines MH17 images

Television cameras at the place where MH17 fell to earth couldnt help panning back to reveal a vast, low-lying landscape of interminable near-nothingness. A roadside cross, dark against a yellow and violet sky, spoke of centuries of quiet farming and rural life interrupted only by the wars that have churned up Ukraines history, the tanks that have rolled across this great empty space with its eerie, Rothkoesque light.

Returning to the charred field, which in a second turned into a monument to every war that has ever mulched the land of Europe, video images join with still photographs in documenting a catastrophe like no other. The visual evidence of disaster should by now be banal, overfamiliar and yet it is not, because humanity is always finding new ways to destroy humanity. As Tolstoy said of families, all true tragedies look different.

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