The Pain of Others

Photojournalists are really stingy with copyright, so here's an image from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but the photos I wanted to show are linked below.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/20101010-EGYPT-3.html




http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/africa/2011-oct-libya-slide-show.html#7


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/africa/2011-oct-libya-slide-show.html#40


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/africa/2011-june-libya-slide-show-.html#76




http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/tyler-hicks-a-decade-in-afghanistan/




I always avoided looking at war/conflict photography because before the Arab Spring, the photos were always from Iraq or Afganistan and I just didn't care. In fact, I have not "watched" or carefully looked at a conflict photograph in all my college years. After reading excerpts from The Civil Contract of Photography by Ariella Azoulay and Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, I decided to look at the horrors that we are supposedly bombarded with.

1. I'm arguing that we are not bombarded. Yes, there's a plethora of images out there, but as I have just demonstrated, many viewers simply choose not to look. The beauty of the internet, you can be as selective as you want. I get my news from the New York Times website daily, but my mouse never hovers over a conflict article, and even if it does, the images that we should see aren't posted with the article, instead they are filed away somewhere on a separate space from the Times site ( I had to actively search for these images rather than being passively bombarded). I have posted links to images that I found extremely painful to look at, and one even moved me to tears.

2. The pictures in my head of the conflict in Afganistan and Lybia were far from what I saw in the photographs, and the photographs made it more real to me. (Agreeing with Azoulay on this point)

3. Photographer: there to show injustice. Subject: knows why photographer is there. Photographer and subject work together to get the message out that injury has been incurred. Social justice. I like the idea that, rather than exploiting these injured persons, the photographer is there to show the injustice of what is happening, and that photography is the medium of this civil contract, to be expanded on further down.

4. Sontag says that only the rich few in the world have the luxury of being far enough away from conflict and suffering to overgeneralize reality as a spectacle. And yes, it is cliche for people to speak about conflict photography as cynically as they do. But I think she was right on the money with, at least television. TV news never gives you anything than a flash of an image or a 15-second sound-bite and then it moves on to the next thing. Aside from the news, there's the phenomenon of reality becoming a spectacle in reality television shows, Youtube viral video stars, Twitter and more. Everyone and anyone can become a spectacle in the US.

5. This idea was intriguing to me: "To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited." She also mentions ancient grievances, when people say "Never forget" or "Don't forget" in relation to an injustice against their people. Too much remembering does embitter. I was thinking about racial/ethnic/religious/gender tensions and thinking about where they stem from and how memory does embitter, but memory is vital to change at the same time. I think it's what you do with memory that counts. To stand around and be hurt and angry is useless, to be hurt and angry and do something about it is change we need in this world.

6. Watching:
     A) Sontag:

          Images have been reproached for being a way of watching suffering at a distance, as if there were some other way of watching. But watching up close--without the mediation of an image--is still just watching.

      B) Azoulay:

 Photography is much more than what is printed on photographic paper. The photograph bears the seal of the photographic event and reconstructing this event requires more than just identifying what is shown in the photograph. One needs to stop looking at the photograph and instead start watching it. The verb "to watch" is usually used for regarding phenomena or moving pictures. It entails dimensions of time and movement that need to be reinscribed in the interpretation of the still photographic image. When and where the subject of the photograph is a person who has suffered some form of injury, a viewing of the photograph that reconstructs the  photographic situation and allows a reading of the injury inflicted on others becomes a civic skill, not an exercise in aesthetic appreciation. This skill is activated the moment one grasps that citizenship is not merely a status, a good, or a piece of private property possessed by the citizen, but rather a tool of struggle or an obligation to others to struggle against injuries inflicted on those others, citizen and noncitizen alike--others who are governed along with the spectator.

Sontag's point about watching goes on to say that perhaps since we can do nothing about others sufferings, we become cynical to the imagery we see. I think that is valid, but I prefer Azoulay's ideas on the subject. In fact, I love her entire idea of the photographic act.
      The photographic act: the subject, the photographer, and the viewer all take part in it and it conveys a message between them. The subject knows why the photographer is there, not always to profit, but to look at what is happening and say, this is wrong, the subject also believes what is happening is wrong, and so together they collaboratively participate in this act. The photograph is shown to a viewer on the principal that, not everyone will care, but those that will may be called into action against this injustice.
     Azoulay proposes that the photographic act and the photographic medium is outside the reigns of sovereign power, outside the realms of the state. Those participating in these acts may be in a territory ruled by the same state, while one may be a citizen and another a noncitizen, they are still governed by the space they occupy. However, the photograph makes everyone equal because no one can regulate it. The photograph is a voice, a call to action, a reminder, a civil contract, all at once.


Rape as an invisible crime and what that says about discrimination against women is up next, after I get off work at 1PM, but until then, here is an article to get you thinking about that idea: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-In-This-Rape-Center-the-Patient-Was-3.html