My
daughter (10) and I just finished reading a book called "Mischling
of the Second Degree" by Ilsa Koen. Ilsa was a young girl during
the Nazi era in Germany. From the time she was a pre-schooler, her parents
directed her to describe her self as a "dissident" when asked
her religion. Her family considered themselves to be free-thinkers.
This book describes the way that the German public was swept up into the
maelstrom of Nazi actions, with many Germans totally buying the Nazi propaganda
and making Nazi philosophy their own, but also with many (maybe most)
simply figuring out a way how not to be crushed. Ilsa herself, was a member
of Hitler Youth. In fact, she rose to the
level of Hitler Youth Leader, while her father begged her to do whatever
it took to avoid such distinction. As it happened, Ilsa was a "Mischling
of the Second Degree", a label that went with Germans who had one
jewish grandparent. She had to go along with the program. Her grandmother
died in a camp, her father worked as an electrical engineer in a forced
labor camp, barely escaping death on a number of occasions.
My whole point here is that this book should be required reading for American
children. Reading a book like this sheds light on a how the cruel, arrogant,
and murderous cycle of Nazi power took hold. It is told by first person.
We see it through a true innocent's (a child's) eyes.
While in America, our system doesn't feature all powerful, terrifying
"police" force such as the SS to control the masses. We have
far more powerful tool of propaganda. As your photo essay so eloquently
points out, it is the power of images. "Evidence" seen can't
be disputed. Once sides are chosen, "evidence" is selected to
support the original stance. We can't be shown contradictory evidence
(coffins of American soldiers, or dead Iraqi children for that matter.)
When it leaks out, (Abu Graib, the killing of the parents of an innocent
Iraqi family in front of the eyes of it's children), that photo evidence
is quickly diminished with words and hidden as quickly as possible.
An unspoken promise is given: No pain for your support, you can still
see in black and white. Americans are "steadfast". We are not
wishy-washy. We are patriotic. We support our soldiers. We support our
troops, morally and with dollars. We support freedom. We support free
enterprise. We support capitalism. To think anything different,
would be wholly unAmerican.
With the absence of the SS troops, its more difficult to explain the acquiescence
of the collective thinking to the will of the fear-mongering, money making,
corporate military industrial complex. It can only be fear, greed, arrogance,
self riotousness and anger. The lack of an SS equivalent indites the American
people on a much deeper level than the German people of the Nazi era.
Complacency; we go along because we don't want our big boat to be rocked.
H. Eversley
February 27, 2005
The Abu Ghraib
Pictures – A New Paradigm in the Representation of War
The photographic image is currently challenged by the new technologies
of the digital, raising issues about truth and belief. However the revelations
of the abuse in Iraqi prisons have gained global currency from digital
photographs whose content far from being disbelieved is the basis still
for evidence in courts martial. Thus in a digital era where theorists
of new media believed reality had dropped away revealing only simulation
and fantasy we see content return to shock the world.
Even in the case of the British photographs that were discredited and
resulted in the resignation of the newspaper editor publishing them (Piers
Morgan, Daily Mirror), the photographs were interestingly discredited
on the basis of their content; the truck was never in Iraq, the uniforms
and kit on the soldiers were wrong for the campaign etc.
The orthodoxy has been of a generalised disbelief in the evidential properties
of the photographic image in the 21st century resulting from the proliferation
of digital technologies and effects (Cameron, Grundberg, Robins). The
upshot, a decline in an historic tradition and belief in the ability of
the documentary photograph to inform us of events in the world.
The use of the digital photograph to rock the confidence of the coalition
in Iraq has further consequences in that the continuous moving news footage
of ‘shock and awe’ appears to have less authority or truth telling
capacity than the casual digital photograph taken by the soldiers on duty
showing situations of abuse that were then emailed to friends, evading
the censor.
Further there is an issue of the type of photograph emanating from Abu
Ghraib. The photographs most resemble trophies, with perpetrators posing
as if for the family snap, a type of photograph in its seemingly casual
construction eschews the doubts surrounding the truth value or veracity
of the documentary photograph. The grin to camera of the posing soldiers
in front of their atrocities finally reveals a damning message about American
values that serves to reaffirm the truth value of the contents of the
image and protects them from postmodern doubts that reality is representable
in any meaningful way by photographs.
Are we then seeing "the return of the real" (Foster) in a post conceptual
world of art and criticism, a dramatic return of the value of content
in the era of the digital photograph, which champions surface and artifice?
A new front has now opened, signaled by domestic modes of digital representation
and email distribution beating the censors and replacing the current orthodoxy
of the spectacle of 'shock and awe'. The real of the snapshot has returned
in the second Gulf War displacing the disbelief of the simulations of
the first that led Baudrillard to suggest the Gulf War did not take place.
Baudrillard J., Simulations Foreign Agents 1982
“ The Gulf War Did Not Take Place Indiana Univ. Press 1995
Bolton, R.,Ed. The Contest of Meaning - Critical Histories of Photography
MIT 1986
Burgin, V., Thinking Photography Macmillan 1982
Cameron. A.,Ed., "Introduction" Digital Dialogues ,Ten8 Paperback
Vol2 No2 1991
Cubitt S., Simulation and Social Theory Sage 2001
Debord G The Society of the Spectacle NLB 1967
Evans J.,&Hall.S.,Eds Visual Culture Sage 1999
Foster H., The Return of the Real MIT 1996
Grundberg A.,The Crisis of the Real Aperture 1988 Hutcheon L.,
The Politics of Postmodernism Routledge 1989
Lister M.,Ed., The Photographic Image in Digital Culture Routledge 1995
Robins K., Into the Image Routledge 1996
Sontag S,. “The Photos are Us” Guardian 24 may 2004
“ On Photography London: Penguin 1978
Struk J., Photographing the Holocaust IB Tauris 2004
Thomas J., Reading Images Manchester 2000
Wells L., Photography a Critical Introduction Routledge 1997
Graham Evans
University of Westminster
Watford Road, Harrow, London, UK
June 16, 2004
'Fool me
once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me', never rang truer. An
eleven-year old girl who learns her best friend has an older sister disappeared
from the face of the earth is entitled to a sense of shock. An entire
nation manipulated has no right to feel shock.
When the British prisoners in Guantanamo were handed over to UK authorities
and subsequently released, they talked in the press of torture and humiliation;
there was no sense of shock. When the US government released documents
confirming its participation in the Dirty Wars in Argentina there was
no shock. When the World Court in Geneva condemned the US government for
terrorist actions in mining the Nicaragua harbor there was no shock.
No responsible adult has any right to feel shock at the images from Abu
Ghraib; this is a response devoid of responsibility. Being shocked by
those images confirms what many feel to be the government reaction: how
horrible those pictures of prisoner abuse came to light. Americans need
to feel responsible, for ignorance does not exlude culpability.
Strangely, the images somehow soften the blow: it is worse to imagine
it. Our dependence on images causes us to disbelieve words, and the people
that speak them.
Some years ago images (taken by an 'amateur') documented the genetic deformities
in new-borns as a result of the uranium contamination caused by the first
Gulf War. I was sickened and yes, shocked.
Jonathan Fox
Barcelona, Spain
May 26, 2004
CONGRATULATIONS.
Well done. Thank you for showing stupid abuses in Iraq with the true horror
at HOME.
The hypocritical perpetrators in the administration scream when the foreign
press shows our dead GIS to the world accusing them of grotesque crimes
and most of our self congratulatory press have caved in to the administration
for three years and have not had the courage to show the reality of the
horrors of war. "Oh Dear Oh Dear, let us protect our citizens from
the truth of it. They might change their minds about who we really are."
MORE MORE MORE. YOU DID NOT SHOW ENOUGH. THERE NEVER CAN BE TOO MUCH OF
THE TRUTH.
MOST SINCERELY,
Paul Fusco
photographer
New York
May 26, 2004
Oh Please!
The Horror, The Horror???????? Not even a sound bite from an old Vietnam
movie can escape that simplistic predictable article. Come on!
Do you guy's ever get out or are you too busy checking everybody's skin
color, not to mention using stock 1960's racial photographs to 'slant'
a point in a 'pointless article'?
Get with the PROGRAM.
Oxen
May 25, 2004
When considering
our access to images, particularly the sort of shocking images presented
here, I'm deeply grateful for both the advent of digital photography and
the Internet as a means of instantaneous and mass distribution of information
-- and even more grateful for the will of people who distribute such information
with the intent to inform and educate the public. I'm grateful that in
America, we still enjoy a level of freedom unheard of in many parts of
the world -- take for example the Great Red Firewall of China, which although
not foolproof, certainly limits exchange of information to a considerable
degree. It's vital to continuallyappreciate and work to protect such freedoms.
As these images so clearly illustrate, the kind of atrocious behavior
we've seen displayed recently at Abu Ghraib prison is not a one-time aberration,
but unfortunately sprouts up recurrently throughout history, irrespective
of whether war has been officially declared. We need to see, so that we
may know and respond and learn and, hopefully one day, prevent.
Sharon Schoen
New York
May 21, 2004
Photography's "Amateur Hour":
The future of the professional photographer may end up having to thank the amateurs who authored the photos we are seeing recently. By illustrating that substance resonates quite deeply, one thing these amateurs' images do is to call into question the over-emphasis on style currently so prevalent in photojournalism and documentary photography. Similarly, by witnessing the power of the global, instantaneous distribution provided by the Internet, perhaps photojournalists and documentarians will be inspired to relinquish the impulse to lionize the print medium and instead find more ways to harness that power and utilize it to assert their own substantive visions and, in turn, their economic viability through independent or collective online distribution, thereby recapturing their overall professional vitality.
Sharon Schoen
New York
May 21, 2004
I can't think of another photo that has had an impact to match these pictures from Abu Ghraib. We have seen governments wrestle with the domestic political fallout from photography, but the global impact of these amateur snaps is huge and we can only guess the international ramifications. The information about the abuse was already circulating but it was the pictures that changed everything. This is an amazing example of the evidential power of photography.
Of course, to my mind the example also demonstrates the credulity of the audience. In the same week the UK was thrown into turmoil by the Mirror's foolish publication of those staged photos of prisoner abuse. Meanwhile I wait with you to see what photo-tricks are pulled out to discredit Kerry. The unquestioning credulity of the public is as dangerous as it is useful. And now with the explosion of digital photography disseminated by Internet, the controls are off. Even if you take a benign view of the media as a controller of information, no one can manage the medium. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be contained.
The events
of the last two weeks reinforce my belief that in the long run we owe
it to photography to educate a more questioning approach in the general
public. It is appropriate to be sceptical of the medium. Meanwhile we
need to develop faith in the author/publisher of the photograph. People
should increasingly question the veracity of the photo, and this is OK
so long as they filter what is seen through knowledge of the source of
the photo.
This is an amazing month for us all.
Stephen Mayes
Director, Art + Commerce Anthology
New York
May 16, 2004
I
spent a half hour at Pixel Press last night, the 12th of May. What
was I doing there? Reading? Looking? Browsing? Experiencing? How inadequate,
these words?
It was personal. When I "rolled over" the image of the
"pile" of stripped Iraqi men and then saw the image of burning
William Brown, I felt a tremendous downward push on my heart; I stopped
breathing; I did not know where to go next, where to hide. Understanding
could only come from looking closer. I must look into the eyes of
the living for an explanation. I needed to enlarge the photo, see again
the lit faces of the Americans encircling - their lungs filling with the
fouled air and smoke and ash from the cremating corpse, their clothes
reeking of burning human flesh and hair and bone. An odor I have read,
time and again, is like no other, and being such is unforgettable. I clicked
on the images. The screen jumped to the hooded men above. I scrolled
down once again to the corpse of poor William Brown. I clicked again,
same jolt. No where to go, but inward and toward those I love. There is
so little time.
James Allen
Author of “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America”
Atlanta, GA
May 13, 2004
The feelings of panic, visceral tensions and disassociation that these images inspire in me are, I had thought, unprecedented. Thank you to Fred Ritchin, for your clarity to place them historically alongside images from other atrocities in our country's history. How do we find the hope in these moments? My panic is deepening.
Erika deVries
artist
New York
May 14, 2004
Cameras are here to stay and in the best of interests take over the role of "God," as in they watch over all. Cameras can become the eyes of "God." I for one feel that humans, "those in positions entrusted with authority" have reached the point where they do need to be watched and recorded. And to start in the White House would set an example. Then when personnel are mustered together on the Senate floor...there would be less room for verbal error. Being embarrassed every day at what my tax dollars buy, am ready for new leadership from the top on down.
Gerald Garrett
Port Aransas, Texas
May 13, 2004
Our culture is very confused—a kind of national associative disorder. I am struggling to put on paper the thoughts and emotions about what the disclosure of the prison photographs from Abu Ghraib mean, not only about how far culpability goes up the military chain of command, but also about what the revelations and the reactions to them say about the state of our nation’s soul.
I heard about this later than many Americans. The week 60 minutes broke the story I was visiting a remote Guatemalan village that had been the site of an army massacre in 1982. For years the US government supplied the Guatemalan military with counterinsurgency training and weapons. They mostly looked the other way as their “cold war” ally slaughtered nearly 200,000 Mayan Indians.
I haven’t been able to sleep since coming back home from Guatemala and learning about Abu Ghraib. I feel as profoundly shaken as I did after September 11th. The sensation of being an orphan, the fear that my country will never recover its soul haunts me.
Words come, but they feel hyperbolic or flatly euphemistic. Today a linguist was parsing the definition of torture on Fresh Air. To me it seemed tortuous rationalization-- his attempts to define and locate the moral turpitude portrayed in the photographs we’ve all seen, as something between “hazing” and the “T” word. These crimes are shocking, but in what sense are they new? The crimes of slavery and lynching and the School of the Americas are part of our history too. For me it is the misplaced concern over the “act of photographing” and all the spinning, that make me wonder if a virulent toxin is fatally infecting our nation's nervous system and its heart. I have sent this link to all my students. Thank you Fred for beginning this conversation. I am still groping for words.
Donna DeCesare
Assistant Professor of Journalism
May 12, 2004
Difficult
to react to those horrible pictures which are really making us sick. We
could not understand that Americans are acting like that in the name of
God and democracy. We hope that the power of these images will provoke
a huge reaction and that Mr George W. Bush will present official excuses
to the population of Irak for his responsability and also to the Americans
for the bad image he is creating about America.
Simone Mohr
filmmaker, writer
Geneva, Switzerland
May 13, 2004
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