University of Amsterdam
Beauty Wrought from Darkness:
Conflict Photography and the Ethical Gaze
Eleanor Shakeshaft Thesis
Dr. Marie Beauchamps 15th June 2016
Contents Introduction – p.3 Chapter One – p.9 Chapter Two – p.29 Chapter Three – p.48 Conclusion – p. 64 Works Cited – p.68
Eleanor Shakeshaft Dr. Marie Beauchamps
Comparative Cultural Analysis 15 June 2016
Beauty Wrought from Darkness: Conflict Photography and the Ethical Gaze
Introduction
Conflict photographs have traditionally circulated alongside media stories of global issues, delivered with shocking headlines, verbal accounts and editorial rhetoric. Having an interest in photographic art, I encountered Lee Miller’s images of the London Blitz in an exhibition and was struck by the collection – it was the first I had encountered that assessed conflict with an artistic rather than photojournalistic perspective. I therefore began to look beyond the frame of photo-journalism to consider the aesthetic value of conflict images and examine whether their display changes their functionality. The latter concern raises questions about how conflict photographs are consumed and their purpose beyond what they report. These questions are formed around the ethics of spectatorship, the different ways one looks at a photograph that depicts pain, suffering and destruction. What impact does observation have, on the photograph itself, the spectator as an individual, and a collective civil discourse
surrounding an event? Spectatorship can occur in private, when contemplating the aesthetics of a conflict photograph and whether one can ethically consider it beautiful. It can take place in public, when one is confronted by visual stories of conflict in an exhibition that curates them to be consumed in a particular way.
When considering how we consume images, is it reasonable to assume a collective perspective, a unified response to experiences of suffering? A collective response would imply a collective memory of an event. This raises questions about how useful testimonies are in the translation of events and whether we can believe what is passed down to us through memory. How can we trust what we think we see when looking at a photograph and is it important to accurately record an event for posterity? For example, viewing Eddie Adams’ photograph Saigon Execution tests the spectator’s capacity for comprehension, judgement and sympathy. The initial reaction to this photograph could be shock, it is disturbing witnessing a man being shot and considering that in this image he will eternally die, as the moment of his death is recorded and immortalised through the photograph. At times of war it is safe to say that nothing is normal, so how can a spectator, removed from a site of conflict, reasonably judge what they see in a photograph? Conflict photographs have the power to manipulate and illuminate. Their frames contract and retract, playing with versions of truth and multiple perspectives, through framing and aesthetics, raising ethical questions about moral judgement. Considering the setting for observation questions whether, as spectators, our response is already structured by a preconceived ethical ethos that constructs our examination of images portraying other people’s pain.
Can conflict photographs be considered beautiful works of art, and if so, what is the role of ethics in this judgement? Is there a “safe” space in which to display them, and how does considering aesthetics, ethics and display impact what conflict photographs represent and transfer into memory? To say it is unethical to call a conflict photograph beautiful limits the power of that image and mistakes elements within it that are integral to our understanding of humanity. Beauty within an image can translate traits including love, compassion, faith, sacrifice and loyalty, experiences of the human condition that do not alter with time. Although the space in which conflict images are displayed affects their aesthetics and our
ethical judgement of them, to consider that there may be a safe space in which to observe and absorb suffering already excuses the spectator from making a valuable assessment of what they see, therefore muting the ability for a photograph to speak and continue to perform as an interpretation of an event that must never be forgotten.
With this thesis I hope to argue that no constraints can be placed on the examination of conflict photographs. Spectators removed from an event can be upset, disturbed, moved or horrified when looking at these images, but should not shy away from close examination of them, if these images are to assist society in taking action on issues that continue to affect communities of people. Images are powerful. The 2015 photograph of a three-year-old Syrian boy lying dead on a beach has re-emphasised this power. How these images are then
communicated, in print, on display in exhibitions, or judged at photographic prizes, is integral to how the suffering of others is translated. If we imagine that images were the only way to record events for future generations, that no other objects or verbal accounts existed, how we represent ourselves becomes reliant on a poetic form of aesthetics that should not limit visibility or presume an ethical judgement.
In the first chapter I consider the form of a conflict photograph versus its content. When viewing an image that deals with a dark subject matter, must we oppose the aesthetics of the shot, its visual value, to its content? It may seem alarming to suggest that a conflict photograph that depicts suffering can contain elements of beauty, but to consider any image beautiful one must first assess what beauty is, or can be. The question what is beauty? is an infinitely broad concern, so when contemplating the aesthetics of an image with dark subject matter, I will focus on beauty as something that contains elements of darkness. Examining the aesthetics of a collection of photographs and paintings, I will depart from the Romantic movement’s definition of the Sublime. I will use their concept of awe in the face of
Edmund Burke do, I aim to argue that beauty can adopt the dark and fearful elements of the Sublime, alongside an aesthetic quality that strikes at one’s heart. The contemplation of beauty in conflict photographs can be useful as a way of examining humanity, of unravelling parts of our nature that we may find disturbing. Théophile Gautier argues “Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless…everything useful is ugly” (Norton Anthology of Art 750), but there is a key difference between useful pertaining to something functional, a utility, and useful pertaining to something valuable, of real use. Contemplating beauty beyond something that is aesthetically pleasing can be useful because beauty is a constant preoccupation of mankind’s, provoking responses of pleasure, pain, joy, and suffering, in visual
representations of human strength and frailty.
Contemplating beauty in a conflict photograph also raises the question of whether it is ethical to observe such images in this way. In chapter one I will discuss the function of aesthetics in conflict photographs, and the impact of beauty on their ethical function, alongside Nicola Foster’s critique of Levinas, who opposes art to ethics. Does the
consideration of the conscience when regarding visual images hinder a fair interpretation of them? Here I will employ Judith Butler’s theory on how one positions themselves in the ethical examination of others’ experiences of suffering, a concern that runs throughout this thesis as I consider how we look at conflict photographs. If we read Butler’s discussion on addressing “I” and “you” as opposed to “we” (25) as a meditation on the impossibility of ethically considering ourselves a collective, do we risk undermining our ability to look at and react to the experiences of others? Regardless of the content or context, it is useful to
consider Roland Barthes’ discussion on how the image speaks to the spectator if we are to counter Levinas’s view that aesthetics is not ethical, and assess Butler’s consideration of the individual examination of an image separate from an understood collective interpretation. In Camera Lucida, Barthes discusses his idea of the “punctum”, that element of a photograph
that “shoots out of it like an arrow” (26), an aspect of an image that “pricks” or “bruises” the viewer, is poignant to them in some way, and sparks more than a “general…polite interest” (27). I ask the reader to remember this concept when assessing the photographs in each of these chapters. It is important we do not generally appraise a conflict photograph with “polite” interest, for fear of denting a sentimental preconception of morality in the face of pain. These images must be allowed to speak and sometimes with great volume.
The second chapter of this thesis moves on from aesthetics to focus on content versus context, and the ethics of the display and spectatorship of conflict photographs. For this argument, I analyse Amsterdam’s World Press Photo 16, hosted in one of the city’s most prominent churches, and examine what impact the display space and the exhibition form has on conflict photographs. Framing is integral to the consideration of any photograph and considering the photograph as frame, the exhibition as frame and the spectator as frame, raises questions about how to look and what can be considered an “appropriate” reaction to what we see. When looking at photographs of people suffering, do we have the right to examine these images in a profound way, to consider them with more than a detached interest? Such ethical questions are tightly intertwined with the value we place on other people’s lives. It is useful to refer here to the complex discussion presented by Butler about the precariousness of life, in which she considers when a life is grievable. She suggests we are obligated “to ask about the conditions under which it becomes possible to apprehend a life or set of lives as precarious, and those that make it less possible, or indeed impossible” (Butler 2). It is alarming that the power to answer the question of when a life is grievable is placed in our hands, because it puts us in a hierarchical position that would qualify us to make gargantuan ethical decisions on the value of a life. The conditions of contemplation remind us that we are viewing dark global issues and loss of life in the context of a gallery, we are not politicians asked to make decisions for lives, but observers of decisions already
made. We are asked to reflect, not necessarily to react. If one argues they must regard conflict photographs with a detached interest, not focus intently on them or even look away, do they perform a selfish act? Does this act remove the power a conflict photograph has to speak? I employ the theories of Gillian Rose to investigate the exhibition as a structuring scene that may dictate our reaction before entering the space, and investigate Angela Dimitrakaki’s argument that the exhibition form frames our encounter with art and dominates visual culture. What effect does this form of controlled consumption have on what a photograph requests from the spectator?
In my final chapter I shift the focus from private contemplation and public
spectatorship, to examine the translation of such images to a wider civil discourse. Examining Thomas Hoepker’s 9/11, I will explore whether conflict photographs seek to represent the events they portray, or if they are interpretations that add to the narrative of events. What truth effect is produced by such images? If conflict photographs are interpretation, how does the perspective of such images affect the memory of an event, of the people who suffered through it and the spaces affected by it? In her work on “Postmemory” and the transmission of memory through generations, Marianne Hirsch says photography promises “to offer an access to the event itself” and is “a uniquely powerful medium for the transmission of events that remain unimaginable” (107-108). This suggests there is always a certain distance
between photographs and those viewing them. When discussing memory and how a period of conflict is remembered, I will look at three images by Japanese photographer Shomei
Tomatsu, taken decades after the bombing of Nagasaki. When examining the aesthetics of these images and how they attempt to methodically deal with the aftermath of catastrophe, I will employ Pierre Nora’s theory that presents memory as a fluid form that does not simply seek to resurrect the past.
What is Beauty in the face of horror?
1. Departing from the Sublime
When considering beauty, in a person, object, vision of nature or work of art, a common preoccupation lies at the core of the assessment: what is beauty? Although an easy question to ask, it is complex to answer, especially if preconceived expectations are formed pertaining to the ethics of certain pronouncements of beauty. Beauty is not solely something aesthetically pleasing to the eye, such as a perfect flower or the often elegised sunset. Nor is it something that only charges us emotionally in a positive way, such as the expression of love for another person. These things are beautiful, but in what follows I aim to argue there is a darkness in beauty that reminds us of our imperfect nature, that roots us to reality, unsettles order and has the ability to cause fear. The Romantic movement developed the idea of the Sublime to contemplate a “bias towards formlessness, suffering and dread” in their work (Eco 281). Their desire to be disturbed and discomforted was a method of reminding fragile
mankind of their place in a grander scheme. One must feel small in the shadow of mountains and mortal in the face of storms, a fragment of something more powerful than oneself.
Writers and artists of the Romantic movement siphoned aesthetics into the realm of beauty or the realm of the Sublime (Eco 281), as it was thought that beauty and the Sublime could not coexist. Edmund Burke, a main proponent of the movement, saw terror as the source of the Sublime and opposed beauty to it as an “objective quality of bodies” – to him the Sublime was the “unleashing of passions” such as fear and power (qtd. in Eco 290). Beauty was not thought to possess this power; it was appreciated as an aesthetic pleasure not a provocative force. I argue this perspective reduces beauty to a thing formed, static and universally understood. Beauty is therefore assumed to be biological and not able to possess power, but beauty can be violent in how it reacts on our senses. It can strike at our hearts, leave us breathless, incite sorrow and cause pain. Does it follow that if something is considered
disturbing it ceases to be beautiful? Does dark content undermine the beauty of an image or in fact realign our understanding of beauty?
Departing from the Romantic’s definition of the Sublime as something that opposes beauty, I propose to use the sublime to understand beauty as powerfully dark and fearful. Considering beauty in this way can create a frame that actively illuminates the beauty in an image. In Ode on a Grecian Urn, Keats wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (qtd in Johnson and Owens, 395) suggesting the importance of a formless beauty that teaches and preserves. On the one hand, this quote offers a totalising and ineffective vision of truth in beauty, that glosses over the negative power of both concepts that in practice can rupture just as easily as unite. On the other, it acts as a form of memento-mori that reflects on temporality and mortality, as the poet meditates on the knowledge that art outlives human frailty. There is a sense of mourning in the lines, but also of hope and reverence, that beauty will endure beyond death. A similar duality can be found in a conflict photograph. It has a reflective function that portrays both sad disbelief and a warning.
Images that circulate in our age of technological warfare, where the lens of the camera is used to record violence and death with severe clarity, tend to be dark and horrifying. They are indiscriminate in their portrayal of death, destruction and suffering. So does it follow that we should be indiscriminate in how we view them? When considering an image that deals with a dark subject matter, must we oppose the aesthetics of the shot, its visual value, to its content? Contemplating beauty in conflict photographs raises the question of whether it is ethical to observe such images in this way, whether light can possibly be found in images that speak of horror. In his discussion on ethics, Levinas seems dismissive of aesthetics, almost mistrustful of the visual, as for him “ethics involves words not images” (Foster 81). When discussing how ethics operates in political and social contexts, can one give authority to an
image to adequately translate or represent the “other” who appears within it? Levinas argues “objects have no light of their own; they receive a borrowed light” (74) and values language over images for the understanding, or the “revelation of the other” (73). This infers that through words one has direct access to the other, not a representation of them by an interlocutor, in this case, a photographer. Foster suggests that in his phenomenological approach to images, Levinas leaves the “(inhuman) image” for words, to bring his approach back to “the world of (human) ethics” (Foster 83-84). By placing authority on words over images as more truthful points of access to the other, the image is discarded by Levinas as an aesthetic inanimate object. Opposing art to ethics, Levinas argues “an image is a shadow of being” and that art is “the very event of obscuring…an invasion of the shadow” (qtd. in Foster 82). This viewpoint implies that images and art not only give false accounts of being, but block communication with other social and political beings. If an image is a mere trace of an other and we place importance on this trace to define that other, this would render
aesthetics entirely unethical, but this is not the role of an image. A photograph sheds light on social and political experiences, it should not be seen to obscure sight of an other, or to blind.
At the close of her article on the ethics of vision, Foster extends an open question that interrogates a numb reaction to photography and the effect this may have on our ethical judgement:
Perhaps we have got so used to photographs we have lost the sensitivity of feeling
that we could be watched by those portrayed, or more accurately by what the
photograph captures, which may not necessarily be a human face, but time itself?
Might this loss have implications for our ethical conduct today? (90)
Here Foster highlights how easily images now circulate around the world and she fears that overexposure to photographs could result in the loss of an ethical conduct when viewing
them. Emphasising an emotional response to photographs suggests we lose the ability to respond to images with empathy if their recurrence before us becomes too routine. This is a concern Butler may address by questioning the role of one’s conscience in viewing images of other people’s suffering – “bad conscience is a form of negative narcissism” (“Giving an Account of Oneself” 38). An act of conscience may incite one to look away from certain images, but this is almost a selfish act, that considers one’s own sensibilities above an other’s. Butler discusses the necessity to contemplate one another alongside philosopher Adriana Caverero’s idea that “we are beings who are, of necessity, exposed to one another, and that our political situation consists in part in learning how best to handle this constant and
necessary exposure” (“Giving an Account of Oneself” 24). There is a tugging back and forth in the practice of ethical examination, when viewing an image can become more about one’s own reaction, what Butler refers to as “I”, than the contemplation of the other, or “you” (“Giving an Account of Oneself” 24).
Cavarero is braver than I am and remarks that there is an irreducibility to each of
our beings, one which becomes clear in the distinct stories we have to tell, so that any effort to fully identify with a collective “we” will fail. The way that Caverero puts it
is, “what we have called an altruistic ethics of relation does not support empathy,
identification, or confusions. Rather this ethic desires a you that is truly an other, in
her uniqueness and distinction. No matter how much you are similar and consonant,
says this ethic, your story is never my story. No matter how much the larger traits of
our life-stories are similar, I still do not recognise myself in you and, even less, in the collective we.” (Butler, “Giving an Account of Oneself” 25)
When contemplating this idea that one cannot recognise themselves in others, when
observing conflict photographs one must question the role of empathy. If we say it is ethical, we are almost required to use the licence that looking is done in order to empathise. However,
when we view a conflict photograph do we (or can we) truly place ourselves in the position of the other we see suffering in an image? Can empathy truly exist and do we have the right to empathise? Does our encounter with the other force us into an ethical stand-off? If this is the case, perversely it can be considered more ethical to view the other with a polite
sympathy, a level of detachment, because we cannot assume that “we” are a collective and have the ability to understand each other’s position. Can this, as Butler might say, constitute an ethical failure? Returning to Foster’s concern and the question of conscience, it becomes imperative not to look away when considering the experiences of each other if we are to exist as a collective.
2. The Duality of a Shot
Considering the ethical questions raised by contemplating the content of conflict photographs against their aesthetic form, and the ability to see beauty in them, exposes a duality within the image. This duality recognises that such photographs can contain
oppositions that question and obscure meaning in an image, as well as our appreciation of its visual value. Conflict photographs can contain both light and dark, hope and horror. When discussing the aesthetics of a shot, can we consider conflict photographs in isolation of their news story, as beautiful works of art? There is a jarring between the aesthetics and content of a conflict photograph, or rather, how one judges its aesthetics. If aesthetics is discussed as a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, then the term beauty implies a certain judgement of artistic taste. In Critique of Judgement, Kant concedes art’s ability to aestheticize something not considered naturally beautiful, that is perhaps outside of nature, by arguing “artistic beauty is a beautiful representation of a thing” (qtd. in Eco 133). This denies the existence of beauty within the object as something that can be illuminated by
beauty, and demotes beauty to an applied veneer used to prettify. However, if beauty is reduced to mere representation, a necessary but secondary consideration in art, it aligns with Gautier’s insistence that beauty is useless. For me, the duality of a photograph comes from the coexistence of form, beauty as an aesthetic pleasure for the senses, and content as emotionally provocative. Kant says “fine art reveals its superiority in the beautiful
descriptions it gives of things that in nature would be ugly or unpleasant” (qtd. in Eco 133), but we cannot reduce the examples Kant uses (such as war) to mere “things” ripe for artistic representation in an opaque and useless definition of beauty. Kirk Pillow highlights that in Kant’s idea of aesthetic judgement and taste, “the judgement of beauty refers to the
expression, or exhibition, or presentation of aesthetic ideas, but not in any sense to their content” (450), but beauty has a purpose beyond aesthetic pleasure.
Beauty is not mute, if considered as a concept it becomes proactive, multifaceted and transmutable, it is open for debate and discussion, and can be used as a tool. Sontag discusses beauty as an idea best embodied by art, that beauty “is deep, not superficial; hidden,
sometimes, rather than obvious” (“An Argument About Beauty” 22), which is useful when contemplating beauty in a conflict photograph. If beauty is a nuanced concept, it will not be perceived by all who view an image, to discern it one must look closer, dig deeper into the aesthetic form to appreciate beauty beyond courteous meaning. Victor Cousin saw beauty as a “purifying agent”, a measured, ideal aesthetic judgement of reason (Murphy 151). Although by anointing beauty with a ‘healing’ power Cousin alludes to beauty as a tool, not something to be contemplated politely, beauty should not be expected to merely purify or heal.
Considering a conflict photograph as both beautiful and disturbing may constitute a duality, but the two definitions do not need to be set in opposition.
The contemplation of beauty in photographs becomes troubling if they show real people. Such spectatorship presents an ethical dilemma. If subjects look at us from beyond
the image that contains them, should we focus on aesthetics, an act that can refuse to reciprocate their gaze? Don McCullin’s Exhausted mother and child, border of India and Bangladesh and Lee Miller’s The Bürgermeister's daughter [Regina Lisso], frame instances
of love, sacrifice, survival and death – preoccupations that have consumed art over the centuries but are given as lived experiences in these photographs. These images subvert form when compared to other artworks, such as paintings or sculpture, because the viewer knows the subjects are real, they are not posed, they suffered before the lens. This reality questions the ethics of looking for artistry or beauty in these images. Considering beauty in this instance is more harrowing but also more imperative, because these artworks are rooted deeper in reality. When discussing how beauty is appreciated in art, Sontag argues it should be “consoling, not troubling” (“An Argument About Beauty” 22), but I argue it can be both. Beauty in art can console by helping to restore faith and offering a form of escapism, of fantasy, it is troubling when we cannot passively regard the aesthetics of an image, but are arrested by a darkness of the unexpected.
When contemplating Don McCullin’s Exhausted mother and child, sorrow pulses from the image like sonic waves, but one must look beyond this, to contemplate beauty within the image and consider what it means to find an image of obvious suffering beautiful. By doing this, one moves closer to fulfilling an ethical obligation, not merely to empathise, as discussed, this is a problematic reaction that places the viewer in the same position as the subjects, and not to generally appraise an image that insists we enter into dialogue with it. The composition of this photograph creates a sense of close proximity as Mother and child fill the entire frame, and one can almost hear the child screaming from beyond the print. The photograph confronts the viewer with suffering, but the lack of a discernible background renders the context opaque. What is important is that we see a mother and child in trouble, despite the political context that put them there. The most striking elements for me in this photograph, in reference to Barthes “punctum”, are the hands of the mother. They have an expressive quality and are elegantly placed, like those hewn from marble in a classical sculpture. One supports her own head, giving the impression of a serenity despite her exhaustion, she is not slumped over but poised. The other gently supports her baby’s head, shielding them protectively close to her body. Her skin is wrinkled and weathered, yet she remains ageless. Without reading the caption one can detect the mother’s exhaustion in her eyes, yet her posture is not combative and even in exhaustion she does not give the
appearance of defeat, her countenance seems resigned yet calm.
This photograph captures the consequence of conflict and even though it is important to remember that this is its function, like any photographs that aim to teach us about the frailty of human cruelty, it is the expression of a mother’s love for her child that endures. This is the beauty that resonates from this black and white image. When asked in an interview for Varsity Magazine in 2012 whether he had faith in humanity, following the deaths of photojournalists in the Syrian conflict, McCullin answered “no”, but after thinking
about the good people he met he said, “There is also beauty in war. It’s very difficult to say that but it’s true… Tenderness is beauty” (Cookson, web).
Raphael, The Small Cowper Madonna, c.1505
Both the form and content of McCullin’s photograph illuminate beauty beyond an ethical examination – how can it be unethical to call this photograph beautiful? One can read it as a lesson in faith, love and devotion. The closer I analysed this photograph, the more I likened its representation of the tenderness between a mother and child as beauty, and the form of the image to classical paintings of the Madonna and child. Raphael’s sixteenth-century painting The Small Cowper Madonna captures the humanity of this relationship before it emphasises divinity. The mother holds her child in a similarly tender way to McCullin’s image. These images represent the same essence of beauty, but the comparison becomes worthwhile when one reads the painting as mute. Beauty lies in the painting’s serenity, but this does not teach us about maternal love and sacrifice, it does not impact beyond aesthetic pleasure. In line with Kant’s idea, it is the beautiful representation of a
mother’s love, but McCullin’s photograph is the beautiful embodiment of it. The darkness in McCullin’s photograph is more emotive, almost more divine.
One might feel troubled looking at conflict photographs, or consider contemplating the pain of real people unethical due to photography’s ability to show death as it happens or almost predict death. By the second part of Camera Lucida, Barthes is fixated by what he describes as a new form of punctum, “which is no longer of form but of intensity” and this new punctum is time (96). “I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake… the photograph tells me death in the future” (96). Death is a violence, but when represented in a painting the aesthetics of a death scene and its dramatic intent are carefully considered and can act as a shield to pain. When regarding representations of Christ dying on the cross or murders of historical characters, even if the viewer is strongly religious or has an imagination that causes them to recoil, there is a visible separation between fantasy and reality that appeases the viewer. Although framing provides certain licence, in its ability to capture scenes or people in action, photography differs from the painter’s brush. It is a medium that plays with and distorts time in images, rendering their content immortal.
Whereas beauty in McCullin’s image can be understood as a mother’s love akin to divinity, the fragility of youth when contemplated in its death makes Miller’s photograph The Bürgermeister's daughter [Regina Lisso] bleakly poignant. It is a haunting image. At first
glance the woman could be sleeping, but with closer inspection it becomes apparent the figure in this image is dead. With this knowledge, is it possible or even ethical to look for beauty in this photograph? Does serenity exist in this image? There is a similarity between Miller’s photograph and Found Drowned by George Frederick Watts, in its composition and subject matter, the death of a young woman. Watts’s painting offers a counterbalance to the ethical consideration when viewing this photograph – between “imagined” art and the “reality” of photographic art. In the painting a woman washed ashore on the banks of the Thames lies in serene pose. We do not know whether, like Miller’s subject, she has
committed suicide, but this can be contemplated with the detachment of an assumption that renders this woman a work of fiction. We can view the aesthetics of this image with a romantic sensibility – the warm tone of her dress glows in the gloom, her arms lay outstretched as though she casts her soul to heaven.
A similar method of interpretation can be applied to an analysis of Miller’s photograph. How the light falls on the woman’s pale face gives her the appearance of a marble sculpture – she could be posed after a work by Canova. Her hands are neatly placed and she too gazes towards heaven. This reading, however, seems problematic. It is troubling because the arm lying across her stomach might have clutched her body in pain during death. It is troubling because we do not know how much of this scene the photographer has
witnessed and the ethical implication of the closeness of the lens that almost renders the young woman the object of a laboratory gaze. The destruction of youth and beauty in this image returns us to the disquieting duality in the Sublime. In On Tragic Art, Friedrich Schiller contemplates beauty as a state in which “our sensible instincts are in harmony”, but argues the Sublime “is composed of a sense of sorrow” (qtd. in Eco 297). Putting to one side the context in which this photograph is taken, to assess its form, the silent, unbiased
meditation on death and lost youth does render the content of this image troubling, but the spectral aesthetics betray beauty.
In contrast, if the context of Miller’s image is reviewed, the armband the young woman wears displaying the medical cross is an alarming feature of the photograph considering the circumstances of the girl’s death. Following the fall of the Nazis, the Burgermeister of Leipzig, his wife, and daughter, were found dead by the allied forces, having recently committed suicide (Haworth-Booth 194). Does the knowledge that this girl was a Nazi change one’s sympathy (or dare I say empathy) when viewing this photograph and call for an interpretation of beauty to be reassessed? If we made an ethical appraisal of this photograph, the question would perhaps move from “should I look?” to “should I judge?” When discussing ethics and the judgement of others, Butler argues “we sometimes move too quickly to summarize another’s life” and reminds us that “not all ethical relations are
the collective “we”, even if our responses and experiences are not the same, Butler urges us to remember that “we are related to those we condemn”, in other words, we are all human, and if we forget this, we cannot be ethically addressed by who we judge (“Giving an Account of Oneself” 30).
How do we translate this caution in judgement of people, into the judgement of beauty in Miller’s photograph? The image’s form may allow a judgement of beauty, but its content and political context makes the consideration of aesthetics pertaining to beauty and taste problematic, rendering this image dark and even ugly. While examining the meaning of beauty in art, Eco writes “art has often been praised for having produced beautiful portrayals or imitations of ugliness, formlessness and terror” (281), but artistry in conflict photographs operates differently. It does not aim to beautify the subject or object before the lens, but to put us face to face with a disturbing reality, in a medium that can be just as expressive, emotional, creative or reactionary as a painting. Summarising this, Sontag writes,
“photography has succeeded in somewhat revising, for everybody, the definitions of what is beautiful and ugly…it becomes superficial to single out some things as beautiful and others as not” (On Photography 28). With Sontag’s point that almost anything can be beautified in the right artistic hands, one can argue it is better for some things to remain ugly.
Travelling from the preoccupation of what is beautiful to a determination towards ugliness, the concept of aesthetics is consciously subverted from taste to tastelessness, as a way of regaining control over fearful themes and, perhaps, beauty itself. When photographing the London Blitz, Miller used her Surrealist influences to create images that “underscore the dark humour of a time when nothing is normal” (Burke 131). When viewed against their environment, such images could be read as subtly satirical or indicative of a sense of irony, but their subject matter remains serious and retains a darkness. Writing about the advent of Surrealism, Eco discusses the “beauty of provocation” as when “art is no longer interested in
providing an image of natural Beauty, nor does it aim to procure the pleasure ensuing from the contemplation of harmonious forms… its aim is to teach us to interpret the world through different eyes” (415-417). The adoption of Surrealism’s “convulsive beauty” (Haworth-Booth 194) by Miller suggests that distorting reality in visual accounts of dark scenes not only offers a different perspective on events, but could be the only way to attempt to understand a time that lacks normality.
Miller’s move from Surrealism to war photography shows an interest in life and the thirst to document and deconstruct it, not to beautify it. Dada would strive to do something similar in its manifesto. Seeing itself as anti-art, Dadaists aimed for a “relentless destruction of the aura of their creations”, using them as tools to criticise the times in which they lived (Benjamin XIV). From Surrealism to Dadaism to Transgressive art, the aim seems not to create something beautiful or to beautify something ugly, but in the destruction,
deconstruction and subversion of form and harmony, to comment on reality in a more reflective and ultimately dark way. Transgressive artist Andres Serrano’s photograph Immersion (Piss Christ), made in 1987, is an image of Christ on the crucifix submerged in a beaker of the artist’s own urine. One can question whether this artwork was created with the intention to shock or offend, or if it alludes to deeper questions about religion, society or the role of art in political comment, or if it can be considered beautiful. Returning to Sontag’s concern that beauty must be consoling not troubling, I question her definition when considering the usefulness of art as social commentary, the usefulness of beauty, and what Andrew Hussey refers to as “the impossibility of an ethics of representation” (Hussey 9). Why not be troubled by beauty? Refusal to be troubled can act as a denial, of recognising what one sees in others and themselves, no matter how dark the reflection.
It may be that a certain ability to affirm what is contingent and incoherent in identity allows one to affirm others who may or may not “mirror” one’s own constitution…
the mirror always tacitly operates in Hegel’s concept of reciprocal recognition: I
must somehow see that the Other is like me, that the Other is making this same
recognition of our likeness. (Butler, “Giving an Account of Oneself” 27)
Here Butler reiterates that our acts of judgement on others we view also act as judgements on ourselves. In the construction of something beautiful (or ugly) and the ability to create a subjective artwork aimed to make its audience reflect on the human condition, photographs raise a mirror to humanity, requiring us to be accountable for who we are and what we do. As suggested by Foster, when we look at images, they also look back at us (90).
3. Subverting Traditional Forms
Conflict photographs can adopt abstract form, play with monochrome and colour, and utilise print techniques, to accentuate and manipulate their aesthetics and apply artistry to their comment. Applying artistry to a shot raises ethical questions about the motivation of the photographer, but when considering a conflict photograph as a work of art, is judgement restricted to content? Does one only question the role of ethics in aesthetic judgement when viewing conflict photographs that are violent, depict pain, or include subjects like children, young women or mothers and babes? Images that do not show pain may be considered more palatable for a sensible aesthetic judgement than McCullin’s suffering family or Miller’s suicided girl, but is it ethically easier to call images beautiful if our conscience is alleviated by the knowledge that we are not witnessing anyone fall? Conflict photographs can impact on a different level, raising questions about meta-themes such as the futility of war, loss of innocence and urban and psychological scarring. The aesthetics of some conflict photographs adapt and subvert classical art forms to comment on these themes.
Don McCullin, Shell-shocked US Marine, 1968
Framing is integral to our perception of what is going on in McCullin’s Shell-shocked US Marine. Taken in 1968 during the Vietnam War (Baker 8), it shows a soldier with
defensively hunched shoulders and glazed expression, clutching the barrel of his gun with both hands, his bulk occupying nearly the entire frame. By observing the subject’s posture and expression, our impression of the action surrounding him becomes more questionable in its absence. Sontag says, “to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude” (Regarding the Pain of Others 41), but I argue the frame of a photograph should not act to restrict our
interpretation of the image, it does not solely exclude. Through its frame, McCullin’s image subverts traditional portraiture. If we drew a comparison between this image and classical portraits of kings and rulers, the soldier should show power and masculinity, dominance and strength. Instead, his posture shows vulnerability but not weakness. The subject has not ‘sat’ for this picture as one would for an artist, consciously posed to present his best self, yet he is immortalised in this photograph. When Eco discusses portraits like those of Henry VIII or
Napolean as heroic images of world leaders, he emphasises the visibility of strength in the subject’s body, that “bears and flaunts the marks of the power he wields” (200). This soldier challenges our idea of the hero. Classical representations of the beautiful male body rely on strength and power, but beauty lies in the vulnerability of this soldier. As one of the only photographs McCullin aimed to produce in isolation as a large print, its function seems to be intended for display (Baker, interview). Could one assume this image embodied McCullin’s comment on the war and was created to invite consideration from the spectator as a work of art?
Nermine Hammam, Armed Innocence II, 2011
The fear displayed by McCullin’s soldier does not show him as weak but as human, an affect that humbles the spectator and plays again on our capacity to judge the other who looks back at us from the print. In Armed Innocence II, Nermine Hammam portrays a similar vulnerability in the young male soldier, to comparable affect. Whereas McCullin’s soldier is battle worn and suffering the trauma of attack, Hammam’s soldiers seem not to have seen combat. Their uniforms are pristine, their faces are fresh and denote youth. This photograph was taken in Cairo during the January 2011 Egyptian revolution, and Hammam describes the arrival of these soldiers in the city:
as the hatches opened, and doors of military vehicles were thrown wide, what
emerged was not the angry stereotypes of power and masculinity we expected, but
wide-eyed youths with tiny frames, squinting at the cacophony of Cairo. The soldiers’
vulnerability and sheer youth baffled me. I had come to Tahrir to photograph images
of military might. Instead, what emerged was its opposite: military tenderness, virile
coquetry and masculine frailty. (nerminehammam.com)
The juxtaposition of these soldiers against a digitally manipulated background is aesthetically pleasing, they are placed in the serenity of nature, not against the background we might expect, the bleak landscape of a warzone. The purity of this setting highlights the beauty and desirability of the men’s youth, but renders this image unexpected and perhaps harder to define as a conflict photograph. There is a sense of uncertainty regarding the capabilities of these men of war, as the scene is non-violent. The disquieting effect created by the image’s aesthetics derives from the subtle melting of its form and content, that blurs the line between peace and violence.
Images of urban scarring induce a sense of fear and subvert traditional views of beautiful landscapes with their nightmarish recall of dark events, similar to the landscapes described by the Romantics with the Sublime. When discussing the representation of nature in art, Eco says “it was acknowledged that art could portray nature beautifully, even when the nature portrayed was in itself hazardous or repugnant” (10). The Romantics talked about the humbling force of the natural environment and revelled in the hazardous nature of landscapes to bring them closer to something divine. When conflict photographs show a landscape, classical visions of beauty and the Sublime depicted in art are wrenched apart. In Dresden After Allied Raids, Richard Peter shows the impact of urban destruction in panoramic scale,
as desecrated buildings reduced to matchstick frames stretch into the distance of his shot. There is a strange natural element to the cragginess of this landscape witnessed from a
bird’s-eye view, as the skeletal remains of buildings adopt the appearance of stalagmites clinging desperately to Earth. A stone figure with outstretched hand dominates the shot, presenting the damage with a sombre, questioning tone. It is an ambiguous figure whose purpose is unclear. If it is an angel atop a surviving church, it does not incite a judgement of the divine because this is not a natural disaster but a disaster of mankind. Does it embody death, drawing attention not only to architectural destruction, but loss of life during the bombings?
Contemplating the figure in this way shifts focus from mere material destruction. Mourning the loss of architecture is different to mourning the loss of life, so is our ethical judgement of the aesthetics of such images affected?
Conflict landscapes weigh heavy with ghosts of human loss and question whether we can say such reminders of destruction that represent terror are beautiful. Biville is one of a collection of photographs by Jane and Louise Wilson that captures the decay of Second World War bunkers that still dot the coast of Northern France. The forms shown in black and white are striking against the cloudy sky and look like sculptural exhibits. At one with nature they blend with the stones on the beach as larger offerings washed up from the sea that are gradually reclaimed by nature. This is a romantic reading of form, and when considering aesthetics and content together, these structures appear as cancerous lumps on the natural landscape, reminders of human fragility, and frailty. The images could be meditative, almost redemptive, as we imagine the structures and what they represent slowly melting away, but reading them in this way bestows them with the role of monuments, an analysis that is also disquieting. There is a stubborn refusal in their disappearance that is scary. Baker presents the question of whether these “monuments” should be removed or destroyed, or “whether such remnants of occupation should be preserved as historical buildings” (163). These are symbols of death and destruction, but we cannot lance the world of ugly reminders of its history.
The point of presenting these subverted forms of classical structure in art and
therefore as contributors to constructions of beauty and my interpretation of the Sublime, is to argue that conflict photographs can be unexpected, unpredictable and work in isolation as pieces of art whose underlying message still insists we consider the horror of conflict. It seems too limiting to consider conflict photographs solely as media constructed images that serve to support a news story, they can also be considered in isolation, as works of art. We cannot shy away from repugnant images, objects that might shock us or offend our
sensibilities, that ask hard questions of us and require us to reflect on our humanity, feel compassion and mobilise change. If mankind cannot contemplate something dark, use it as a self-reflective tool, see beauty within it or enable something beautiful to be born from it, then beauty really has become useless.
The Impact of Exposure – Conflict Photographs and the Exhibition
It seems exploitative to look at harrowing photographs of other people’s pain in an
art gallery. (Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others 107)
Images of conflict are mostly delivered with the news, alongside coverage of war with supporting editorial, distributed on the internet or shown on television. In such cases a private examination of the images one receives is made, but what happens to the functionality and aesthetics of a conflict photograph if it is displayed on the walls of a public space? If the display of images in an exhibition automatically qualifies them as works of art, what ethical questions does this raise for the spectator? In this chapter I will examine Amsterdam’s World Press Photo 16 and consider how the content of an image might change according to its context.
How an image is framed is integral to our reception of it, whether the frame of the image itself is considered, the exhibition as frame, the photographer as frame or the spectator as frame, each frame alters the image to a certain extent and imposes a different interpretation on that image. Butler discusses the “epistemological problem” with framing if it does not function properly to enable our apprehension of the lives of others, for example, if frames become political “operations of power” they can seek to “delimit the sphere of appearance itself” (Frames of War 1), imposing too much control over what the image communicates and how we receive it. Does the exhibition assert this power over the image and serve to structure our reaction to it?
If we consider the viewing of photographs as a dialogue between the subject and spectator, a reciprocal act of looking and being looked at, it would follow that we give the images and perhaps the subjects in them, the same power to speak as us. However, there is always something that remains lost in translation due to the detached nature of the appraising
spectator. Considering Sontag’s suggestion that it is exploitative to view images of people’s pain in a gallery, and with this idea of reciprocation in mind, one can question whether looking at photographs of conflict turns the spectator into a voyeur.
On entering Amsterdam’s World Press Photo 16, the visitor is confronted by a board displaying the overall winners since the prize started in 1955. It is a sobering collection covering all manner of human suffering and violence, as well as natural disasters and the fallout of horrific accidents. Roger Luckhurst suggests that “every generation gets its defining traumatic image” (174), a fact that sadly seems true when we assess the wealth of trauma spread across these images from the past seven decades. Luckhurst almost sounds resigned in his assessment, a reaction that can be construed as a symptom of our era of exposure to such images of pain and violence. It does not register disbelief as much as it seems to recognise a norm. The display board of overall winning images sets the tone for the rest of the exhibition as it does not let the spectator forget the atrocities that human beings inflict on one another, the darkness of human nature is emphasised in a space that ironically was built in order to shed light. Considering the space as frame, does the place in which an exhibition of images is hosted affect the way one judges what they see? If we moved the images from a public to a private space, would our ability to comprehend what is going on in an image change again? Butler talks about cultural modes that regulate “affective and ethical dispositions through a selective and differential framing of violence” (Frames of War 1). By cultural modes, she refers to practices that attempt to limn or delimit experiences of war through methods of framing, such as the photograph or the exhibition. Is there a ‘safe’ space in which to look at photographs that depict violence, suffering and pain?
1. The Importance of the Frame
Framing is integral to our perception of what is going on in any photograph, because even though it may show a scene we understand was taken in a live situation, it is still a fragment the photographer has chosen to capture. It is one part of a larger scene that is focused on in order to communicate a particular message. If we begin to question what is in the frame, it also becomes necessary to question what is outside the frame, what is absent. Butler says, “the frame functions not only as a boundary to the image, but as structuring the image itself” (Frames of War 71), but I argue that the frame is not so rigid, it is a structuring tool yes, but not a boundary. Things can move in and out of the margins, figures on the periphery can hint at their presence, light from elsewhere can cast into the frame. Hope for a New Life, the winning photograph of World Press Photo 16, does not have a restrictive frame;
asking us to question who this figure is. The man passing the baby into these arms focuses his eyes outside the frame; can we assume he is looking at the person taking the baby? Perhaps he focuses on someone else or has recognised a different threat. The point is, we cannot know.
Warren Richardson, Hope for a New Life, 2015
The frame of an image may communicate, manipulate or suggest interpretations of the action within a photograph, but another frame that serves to influence or even alter our
perception, is the exhibition in which the photograph is displayed. The exhibition functions as a frame, because it structures a specific context in which we consume images. With this in mind, how far does the venue structure how we view images and impact our appreciation of them? When discussing structures and technologies adopted by institutions such as museums, that serve to influence spectators, Gillian Rose presents the possibility of looking at
photography as an institutional apparatus, a Foucauldian technology that produces a “certain regime of truth” (233). A regime of truth implies an accepted authority, the photograph becomes a mechanism that proposes to distinguish between what is false and what can be considered true. Rose argues that producing visual images in certain ways, as ‘art’ for instance, creates different subjectivities, such as the curator and the visitor (234). These
layers of creation, Rose argues, are examples of institutional power that can produce “conflicting discourses and contested ways of seeing” (235). Here Rose suggests that the institution imposes a structure on the images, how they are framed and therefore how they should be contemplated. The curator is part of this authoritative context, their work is structured by the institution for which they operate. The visitor is in turn enveloped by this authority, and what they see is regulated as they become invited spectators privy to the curated content. Angela Dimitrakaki discusses the exhibition as something that frames our encounter with art and argues that it has come to dominate culture in our era of globalisation (305). “The exhibition as a cultural form rather than site, constitutes a universally
recognisable and hegemonic modality of encounter between art and the public” (311). Dimitrakaki draws our attention to the commerciality of the museum now, which functions not only to host exhibitions and display permanent collections, but also organisers events and publishes books, and there is a gift shop that cannot be avoided on entering or exiting the museum space. The museum is no longer a purely academic site for public education and the distribution of knowledge, it is a commercial space that has entered the museum into the realms of the entertainment industry.
As civil sites that represent a cosmopolitan society, most art galleries and museums are custom built for the purpose of displaying art or artefacts, but Amsterdam hosts World Press Photo 16 in De Nieuwe Kerk, a fifteenth-century cathedral that was turned into an exhibition space in 1979 to fund the building’s maintenance. It is curated as an art exhibition, there is an entry fee and gift shop, but the space was not purpose built for this function and as a former site of religious worship, there is a tension between the context and the content of the exhibition. This ‘re-invented’ space is problematic due to its lack of neutrality. It is not the white cube of a gallery, nor the secular public space of a museum. It is not a silent, unobtrusive host. Sontag argues that photographs can act as memento mori, “as objects of
contemplation to deepen one’s sense of reality; as secular icons” (Regarding the Pain of Others 107), but contemplating conflict photographs in this way, set against opulent
surroundings emblematic of a wealthy society, alongside tombs of heroic naval officers and honourable civil servants who built the city, is discomforting and jars one’s sense of reality. The display of these photographs in this space encroaches on the photographs themselves, implying a judgement or solution. There is something about the exhibition as frame that becomes disturbing, beyond the images contained within it.
to call the frame into question is to show that the frame never quite contained the
scene it was meant to limn, that something was already outside, which made the very
sense of the inside possible, recognizable. The frame never quite determined precisely
what it is we see, think, recognise, and apprehend. Something exceeds the frame that troubles our sense of reality… something occurs that does not conform to our
established understanding of things (Butler, Frames of War 9).
Visitors are told that de Nieuwe Kerk is now a gallery, which would qualify the images as works of art in a space that is neutral and detached, but this gallery space acts on the image
differently, it becomes involved with the image. On opposite sides of the church the coloured squares of stained glass windows melt into the monochrome and coloured squares of the photographs beneath them, creating an intriguing and odd juxtaposition of honour and construction, against suffering and destruction. Are visitors required to read this method of curation in a particular way? One interpretation could read the frame as a comment that suffering and destruction illustrate the dark side of humanity, which ultimately drives us to look for or question faith. Another reading of the frame could interpret a comment of universal acceptance, a place of sanctuary and peace, that sits uneasily alongside the
photographic stories of refugees crammed onto a boat, illustrating the current migrant crisis. Dimitrakaki argues it is not easy for “institutions of art to become proper, open and
unpredictable social spaces. What they seem to become instead is laboratories for
experimentation with the social, which is quite a different thing both ethically and politically”
(318). The frame of the exhibition then begins to raise ethical questions about whether there is a ‘safe’ space in which to display photographs of violence and suffering.
So what can one reasonably consider an appropriate place to display such
photographs? Sontag says “Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store (which may also be an airport or a museum)” (Regarding the Pain of Others 107), a justified concern when considering the locations chosen to exhibit World Press Photo 16 around the world. Sydney hosts the
exhibition in a library, Edinburgh in the Scottish Parliament, and Hiroshima in a shopping mall – a space for learning, a space for democracy and a space for consumerism. Each space is emotive, as each context betrays certain attitudes to the content of the photographs. The library seems most appropriate, as a quiet space for learning and contemplation, the
parliament, a political establishment, alludes to themes presented by the images, of peace and war, democracy and enslavement, but the use of the shopping mall comments in a more disturbing way on how we consume conflict photographs.
To adopt Sontag’s concern about the difficulty of finding spaces in modern society for serious contemplation of images, it would appear a certain levelling occurs in a commercial space, that neutralises images to be contemplated in a particular way. Where the context that created the image rubs against the context in which it is displayed.
we would miss something essential in our understanding of how the human condition
exists only historically, were we to take for granted that the exhibitions we visit
contain merely art. They also contain the operative structures and processes through
which art is uprooted from its complex affective and material context where
everything is possible and delivered as the neutralised aftermath of real action – in
which case, indeed, the only thing left to do with art is to proffer judgements about
Dimitrakaki raises here the question of whether a pre-conditioned context proffers
judgements on the content of the image itself, or merely grazes the aesthetic surface. If one cannot comprehend the content of an image against the context in which it is framed, does one revert to concerns about its displayability? Does framing conflict photographs in an exhibition qualify them as works of art? The way the images are hung creates an interesting link between their aesthetics and surroundings. Large prints are suspended from the ceiling so the visitor can move between them easily, creating an immersive experience that allows them to interact with the images. This makes the images feel more present, but also affects the way their aesthetics are communicated. They are not against a stark white wall, which would suggest a level of detachment in how the aesthetics of the image are appraised, but are
seamlessly absorbed into their surroundings as fixtures of contemplation, like the architecture of the church. On one hand this emphasises the function of the image as interactive, it makes the visitor react with more than a polite appraisal of a gallery wall. On the other hand, it undermines the prominence of the image by placing importance on the structural
surroundings, the architecture, highlighting the impressive nature of the space instead of the images.
An integral part of framing, in the context of an exhibition, is the caption given to a photograph by the artist or curator. This helps to shape our perception of what is going on in the image, it can serve to illuminate but also pass judgement or create bias, acting as verdict. Is this form of verbal testimony required for a greater understanding of what is happening in a photograph, or is it merely another layer of interpretation? Azoulay discusses verbal
testimonies that can be included in an image caption as a way of restoring “the missing dimension of specificity to the photograph” which enables the image to testify to “precise circumstances” (222), but captions can be just as emotive as they are informative. The caption can, whether intentionally or not, classify or categorise a person, implying they are
more recognisable when delineated into roles that define them as “refugee” or “victim” or “prisoner”, for example. Although, as Azoulay argues, the photograph does not seek to put such concepts on display, or identify figures as representative of certain categories (225), in order to provoke a certain response or level of understanding from the spectator, the curator of World Press Photo has chosen to caption the images. The visitor’s perception is therefore already structured when they regard the image, blocking what may be considered the
“wrong” interpretation of who a person is. We can return here to whether the frame determines if a life is recognisable, the caption as frame seems to work separately to the aesthetics of the visual. It instructs what we should concentrate on. Not only do captions locate an image geographically, they locate it within a discussion, representing a point of view. Abstract and general forms of captioning can limit the frame to such an extent that an image can almost become a political statement rather than a work of art open for
interpretation. When Francisco Goya created his brutally stark plates for The Disasters of War, he captioned them with superlatives such as I saw this, This is bad, and This is Worse,
labels that qualify these works of art as taken from real events, but that also infer the images were not evidence enough of his disbelief, that they did not speak alone or as loudly as he wanted them to. By creating these artworks Goya was attempting to understand and exorcise disbelief in what he had witnessed during the Peninsular War, and they remain some of the most alarming images of war that exist, even though they are artistic renditions, not
photographs. When framed in an exhibition they would have the same impact on a viewer as the images of previous World Press Photo winners shown at the beginning of the exhibition, images that have been displayed and curated since 1955.
2. Spectatorship and the Ethical Gaze
Another frame that defines the image and how its context affects its content, is that of the spectator. If hanging conflict photographs in a gallery space qualifies these images as works of art, a tension is created in the role of spectator, as it becomes difficult to divorce the appreciation of the aesthetics of an image from the discomfort of witnessing someone else’s pain. The moral obligation to act after witnessing scenes of destruction can contribute to this ethical tension, through a sense of guilt or realisation of apathy within us. When considering our role as spectator at an exhibition, how should we determine the most ethical way of looking at images that contain pain and suffering?
If we begin with the language we use to describe the act of looking, it quickly
becomes apparent how the complexity of semantics can betray an attitude to looking that may cause discomfort. Pinpointing the “correct” way of describing the act of looking also
reiterates the role of ethics in determining how to look at other people’s suffering. In the title of her book, Sontag refers to the act as “regarding” the pain of others, but this word feels too polite, nonchalant almost, and therefore, perhaps, dismissive. It implies we can remain detached, passing over an image without really looking deep into it. If we consider
“contemplating”, this word also infers a level of detachment that suggests we linger too long over an image, whilst not actually looking at it. This detachment almost becomes a selfish act as the contemplation is more about what we take from an image, or how we describe an image, rather than suggesting the image has the power to give something to us, to speak back in a way that could provoke us to change our perceptions.
By considering these definitions of ways to look, are we conditioned by a communal ethical ethos, a normative model for how one reacts to an image? If we re-consider the concept that “we” do not exist as a collective precisely because we cannot presume universal
experience, then it follows that “we” cannot address images as unified spectators either. When discussing Adorno’s Problems of Moral Philosophy, Butler highlights his concern that “the collective ethos is invariably a conservative one, which postulates a false unity that attempts to suppress the difficulty and discontinuity existing within any contemporary ethos” (Giving an Account of Oneself 4). This idea would brand visitors as a conditioned collective when entering a space. It might follow that the ethical consensus is conservative, and a unity does exist in the bringing of people together in a particular space, at a particular time, in a particular location, but I argue that one’s deepest reaction is always personal. Butler stresses Adorno’s caution “against the recourse to ethics as a certain kind of repression and violence” (Giving an Account of Oneself 4). This repression can occur if a group, such as the visitors to World Press Photo, are conditioned (or curated) to react in a certain way to what they see. The violence cautioned by Adorno and Butler occurs if this conditioning results in the creation of false interpretations and even false sympathy. Butler argues “there is no “I” that can fully stand apart from the social conditions of its emergence” (Giving an Account of Oneself 7), but as we consider the images of conflict in World Press Photo, we can only do so
from the context of our own individual lives, our different subject positions, precisely because we cannot claim universal commonality. Ultimately, one should detach from a unified mode of observation and look at photographs as an individual, if one is to form a genuine reaction to an image. Such a reaction should not be based on an expected response, plucked from a normative model, because it empowers images and their ability to speak more if it is not.
Tasking to define the language of ways to look, Butler explores the distinction between “apprehending” and “recognizing” a life, and argues that apprehension “is less precise, since it can imply marking, registering, acknowledging without full cognition” (Frames of War 5). Therefore, “apprehending” may not seem to go far enough when deciding
the best way to look at an image, due to this lack in acknowledgement, but it is natural for someone far removed from the action in a conflict photograph to look at it with a certain detachment. When visitors to World Press Photo view images of injured Syrian children after their school was bombed, or urban gang shootings in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, I would argue it is inappropriate to assume they recognise what is happening in the image, or they
empathise, because one cannot do either of these if one has not lived through the same suffering. Butler argues:
What we are able to apprehend is surely facilitated by norms of recognition, but it
would be a mistake to say that we are utterly limited by existing norms of recognition when we apprehend a life… The fact is we do not simply have recourse to single and
discreet norms of recognition, but to more general conditions, historically articulated and enforced, of “recognizability”. (Frames of War 5)
Our responses come to rely on what we have read in papers, what we know from history, normative constructions of how one should appropriately react when one apprehends a life lost or taken. We must return to the ethical examination of “we”, “you” and the “other” here (Butler, “Giving an Account of Oneself” 24), because if we do not think of ourselves as a collective, we cannot therefore assume to comprehend evils that are enacted on some of “us” and not others, nor believe they are easily translatable, as they do not translate at all.
So how far does the exhibition as frame go to structuring our ethical response to seeing such images? The exhibition constitutes a safe space precisely because we are already conditioned how to act when we enter this space. It is implied that our role is as pedestrian, that we are there to view as bystanders and are already instilled with a level of detachment – we are aware of what we are going to see before we see it, even if we do not yet know the details of the images precisely. We can choose when to enter, when to leave, and how long to
