Freitag, 6. Juli 2007
Susan Sontag and photography's view of devastation and death
Susan Sontag's broad survey of photography, war and disaster, and, by association, an equally broad 'us' as viewers appears in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine. It is not transcribed online, so, before I go further, I highly recommend that you obtain a copy in print. It is a bit of a monster, probably around 25,000 words, all worth close attention.The essay, divided into six sections, traces the history of this three-way relationship, connects it to wider representations of suffering and pain in the arts, riffs on the role of photography (and "image-flow" media such as television) in contemporary society, touches on the role of photography and written narrative in our memories, contrasts the still image to the moving, throws in a quick shot at Debord and Derrida for claiming the "death of reality," and sums it all up with an explication of a 1992 Jeff Wall photograph titled Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army Patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) -- like I said, a monster. I'll try not to summarize, as I can't do her rhetorical power justice.Before I get started, please let it be known that I openly invite criticism of all types. I am still working out my reactions to this essay and hope to learn from others' interpretations and reactions to both Sontag and my writing below. Here goes:Her first move is to foreground the fact that photographs - the one element in this triangular relationship seemingly without human involvement - are indeed constructed. "Photographs of the victims of war are themselves a species of rhetoric." And later, "It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude." With this setup in place, she is free to investigate the dynamic between three (more or less) equally subjective actors: the makers of war and suffering, the photographers of war and suffering, and the viewers of war and suffering.And what a complex dynamic it is. Semantic tip-toeing through the daisies is important when handling an issue as complex and sensitive as this, and my first question arises from her use of the world militant toward the end of the first section: " To an Israeli Jew, a photograph of a child torn apart in the attack on the Sbarro pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem is first of all a photograph of a Jewish child killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. To a Palestinian, a photograph of a child torn apart by a tank ground in Gaza is first of all a photograph of a Palestinian child killed by Israeli ordnance. To the militant, identity is everything." How do we define militant? The connotations of the term in contemporary Western parlance imply a certain fierce radicalism -- think of the Michigan Militia or those who killed the children described in her examples -- yet her switch from the specific examples to a very general term implies to me that all Israelis or Palestinians are considered as such. And what of Americans viewing these images, not explicit actors in those battles yet nonetheless closely involved? Are we militant as well? How do we separate the "innocent" from the "implicated"? I don't know exactly how to define the term, and at this point simply wish that she would do so a little more thoroughly.Sontag concludes the third section by stating: "Technically, the possibilities for doctoring or electronically manipulating pictures are greater than ever -- almost unlimited. But the practice of inventing dramatic news pictures, staging them for the camera, seems on its way to becoming a lost art." Yet it seems to me (and, I think, to Sontag) that our taste for the dramatic is as strong as ever. She describes the photographs of the Vietnam War as being the first that we can assume were not set-ups (and therefore possessing moral authority), explaining this by the presence multiple witnesses in the form TV news cameras. I would argue, however, that it is the immediacy of these images that grants them their moral authority, reinvesting the camera with its supposed objectivity. The atrocity you see before you is happening right now, or, in the case of the Vietnam War, happened only hours ago. Is this what makes it dramatic, or "real"?The beginning of the fourth section segues briefly into the realm of the aesthetic, an area of particular interest to me. The notion of a "terrible beauty" is raised often by artists, but Sontag believes it doesn't function well when describing photographs. Photographs that depict terrible situations with formal grace -- and here the work of Sebastiao Salgado gets a light dressing-down -- are conceived as "aesthetic" and therefore weaker. Yet there is something to be said about the power of beauty to stir individuals to movement. One of the two theses in Elaine Scarry's recent book On Beauty and Being Just is that beauty, through its ability to move us toward identifying with (and maintaining and replicating) that which is beautiful, prompts us toward a greater sense of social justice. I agree with Sontag's view of the not-fully-thought-out politics of Salgado's photographs, but also feel that one cannot dismiss the power of aesthetic beauty so outright. There is value in the aesthetic value of pictures, as long as that value is taken in hand with all of the other data -- explicit and implicit -- the photograph imparts.Very worrisome for me are these statements: "The problem is not that people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs. ... To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture. ... Harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock. But they don't help us much to understand." One of Sontag's greatest strengths lies in her ability to summarize the present, and I think it is important to place her observation more directly in line with the attacks of September 11. It is without a doubt that the televised and photographed imagery of the attacks on the World Trade Center (and Washington and Pennsylvania, lest we forget) was both abundant and the only way the disaster was experienced by a majority of the population. It is through this unending stream of imagery that we relate to the events, and how many people would eventually describe it as a "spectacle," an interpretation that Sontag cuts through quite sharply toward the end of the essay. She states: "To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism. It universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment."(Here's where I really ramble a bit off topic, and I hope that someone can critique what I'm discussing.)What I'm interested in is a phenomenon experienced on the ground that morning: a sort of reverse-projection of the term "spectacle" that allowed people to, as they stood in New York watching the events unfold before their eyes, claim the unreality of the situation. That it was like a movie. That this couldn't possibly be happening. It was a distancing technique afforded these viewers by the relative peacefulness of their daily lives, one that allowed them to diminish the emotional response to the attack. In my opinion, one of the distinguishing characteristics of an advanced capitalist society like that of the United States is an inability to deal with emotions and emotional residue, especially in public. The immediate emotional distancing from what was happening preceded a later, much more codified version. As the site of trauma became a pilgrimage location, an immediate parallel response came in the form of the memorabilia of memory, trinkets and t-shirts and postcards and other commodities. The purchase of these items allowed people visiting New York (and many New Yorkers as well) an ability to feel closer to the events that unfolded, to substitute their public emotional reaction (and the potential for interaction that creates) with the purchase of goods. The mechanics of our capitalist system overtook a glaring need on the part of individuals to cope emotionally and psychologically with the trauma at hand. Admittedly, it's not that simple, and many of the commodities were offered by low-income New Yorkers attempting to revive displaced business by morphing their content of their push-carts and street tables to reflect the changing nature of the tourist money that supports them. However, it seems important to recognize this immediate substitution of the emotional with the economic, especially as we move forward in the process of determining what will fill (or not fill) the World Trade Center site. How can we begin to determine the form of a public site of mourning if we do not know how to mourn in public? The further removed from the attacks we become -- and the difficulties of any design process will take time to work through -- the more reliant we become upon the imagery of the attacks, which Sontag and others have long characterized as mediated. Do we wish to move ahead in the healing process through a haze of double mediation -- that of the capitalist response to the attack and the imagery by which we remember it? This speaks nothing to the amount of related material -- image-based or not -- that has piled on to our memories since that day nearly fifteen months ago.Anyway, to return briefly to Sontag. I wish that she would have allowed her essay a bit more of these kinds of ruminations. In the September 24, 2001 issue of The New Yorker, she wrote a "Talk of the Town" piece that was pretty directly critical of United States foreign policy, and she received a pretty thorough batch of criticism for it. I have to wonder if that experience shaped the writing -- or the editing by the magazine -- of this essay. The only somewhat political contemporary barb she throws in is a comment that says one of the reasons the Israeli-Palestinian has become such an international event is the former's direct ties to the United States. She also states that many people (herself included, perhaps) feel that "what is ultimately at stake... is the strength of the forces opposing the juggernaut of American-sponsored globalization, economic and cultural." A strong opinion, but in the context of this essay it becomes an small island floating in a sea of art history scholarship and close analysis of individual images.However, it is not her duty to examine everything, as nice as that may be for all of us. In the meantime, this essay serves as a starting point for what I hope will be an interesting public discussion. I've got my sights set on news.google.com looking for her name, and hope that something can happen here as well.UPDATE: Here is a link to collections of war photography online, presented in conjunction with Sontag's article, from The New Yorker's "Online Only" section.3rdworldcinema, I'm looking at you. I hope that a thorough discussion of this essay -- though not limited to the two of us, of course -- will soon get started.
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I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon practicing the piano part in Brahms A major piano quartet (1st 2 movements), then read some of the Sontag article, then read some of your post. I'll finish reading both today (Brahms will take longer) but to begin the discussion I think you may be overinterpreting Sontag's use of "militant." In the political vocabulary of most Europeans and others--except in this odd backwater we inhabit--it means, pretty straightforwardly, active member of a movement (as distinct from mere voter or dues-payer or publication-subscriber.) The activity in question can be election campaigning or union organizing or guerrilla warfare; what's decisive is that the militant is *active* and sees everything, including photos of death and suffering, through the lens of engagement. (The French even use the verb form "militer" to characterize someone's chosen political vehicle--"moi, je milite dans la CGT" or whatever it might be.) And I think Sontag is making the (fairly straightforward) point that there's always a perceiver viewing and "reading" photography, and if that perceiver is "un militant" then the image will be assigned a meaning in the context of the specific conflict it depicts, rather than being seen as generic death, generic suffering.
The Brahms Quartets are lovely. I discovered them via the New York Public Library's Performing Arts branch, which allows you to check out up to ten CDs at a time for up to three weeks. I would check out jazz and classical discs on Thursday nights, when they are open late, import them all as MP3s onto my laptop, and drop them off at the branch on 7th Ave. & 23rd Street on my way to work the next morning. I greatly expanded my collection of classical and jazz music that way. I am very limited in my knowledge of classical music, but have found that so far I prefer chamber music to orchestral pieces, and that piano and string quartets are generally the most appealing. I find many of the compositions so mind-bendingly complex that it helps me to have fewer instruments on which I can focus. In terms of period or style, I haven't been able to really get specific. Given all that, do you have any recommendations?Reading back over what I wrote, even before I posted it, I thought that perhaps I was looking too far into the definition of 'militant.' Thank you for also pointing that out. Another question comes to mind. Given the point that there is always a viewer or 'reader' of an image, does it become important to begin differentiating between passive and active viewers? Everyone is viewing, but it is those who are active (many times those who can also be called 'militant' about whatever cause) who act as reflectors, further disseminating their reading of the image along with the original. Given Sontag's later discussion of the weakness of the image in conveying robust amounts of information, is the militant's use of images for propagandistic purposes dangerously reductive? If one wishes to be militant, is it better to disseminate narratives? You can tell I'm thinking through this as I write it, but maybe you know what I'm getting at?The other thing about my original post is I don't know why I included that sentence that starts "In my opinion, one of the distinguishing characteristics of an advanced capitalist society.." -- I always feel like a thirteen year old anytime I mention capitalism. I do not know enough about its workings nor its alternatives to really comment much, and there's something about the word which makes it so dangerous to include in any discussion... both in its complexity and the automatic eye-rolling bringing it up often generates. Anyway, I digress, and thanks for responding.
Brian, a thoughtful response. Im at work and dont have my NYer before me, so I'll go home with this and face a cold snowy night with the warmth of Sontag and my own spinoff. Look for it tomorrow, since I still donmt have a landline to access LJ and all y'all intelligesia.
I wouldn't let the eye-rolling intimidate you--capitalism is capitalism, and even its staunchest defenders have no trouble calling it by that name (though they used to prefer daintyisms like "free enterprise" when they were more nervous about the existence of possible alternatives.)Piano chamber music is something I know pretty well; I don't get to play the incredible string quartet repertoire, but what I do get is wonderful. Probably the biggest sub-category is the piano trio (w/ violin and cello)--there are more than 30 by Haydn, 7 or 8 Mozarts, 7 (i think) Beethovens, 2 glorious Schuberts, 3 Brahms, 2 Mendelssohn, 3 Robert Schumann and 1 Clarra Schumann, and the two big 20th-cetury ones: the Ravel and the Shostakovich. And lots more besides--Chausson and Saint-Saens and Arensky and even Chopin (a nice, neglected piece) and Johann Nepomuk Hummel... there are fewer piano quartets-- the 2 Mozarts are magnificent, the 3 Brahms, Faure... and quintets--of these latter the Brahms, Robert Schumann, Dvorak and Shostakovich are all great. Then you get the more unusual instruments--Brahms Clarinet Trio and Horn Trio, Bartok "Contrasts," Mozart piano and woodwind quintet. I'm leaving out a lot here, too, just hitting the mainstream high spots. It's a rich and wonderful territory, and I wish you years of fun exploring it.
I'm in no rush. I'm debating a cold snowy night in the tenth floor study lounge of Bobst or a cold snowy night in the second floor distraction lounge that is my bedroom. Either way, while here at the gallery, safely behind a thick floor-to-ceiling plate glass window, the cold and the snow appear beautiful. My coworker is from Los Angeles, and while she has been on top of snow while snowboarding, she has never been underneath it as it falls. The local bagel place will soon deliver warm soup, the art world is in Miami, and the quietness of it all is really quite charming.
off to read the article, will return.kind regards
i have a ticket to mercy tonight that i can't use..do you want to meet at bam within the hour..? (you do live in brooklyn?)i'm leaving in about 10 minutes, so if youre online and want to go...just send an email/respond to this..
I watched the WTC event on CNN from the other side of the world. My reaction was disbelief too. I found that reaction interesting. I see death and destruction daily in visual images of one sort or another, but it was the unexpectedness of an attack on the peaceful daily life of "our" part of the world, that most people here found disturbing. I find that identification troubling. But despite my other identification with the world's oppressed, it is also true that I live a very comfortable existence in which I daily benefit from the way global capitalism is structured. So yes, I see it as an attack on 'us' (the first major one ever - though we have routinely attacked 'them').This raises the question of innocence. I am disappointed in the response of most people in the west to this disaster. We should be asking ourselves much more about the extent of our implication. The children who die cannot be implicated, but we are adults. We have the capacity to understand the meaning of these images if we want to and the capacity to act on our understanding. The worst consequence, in my view, is that we are forced into a position of defending the empire against religious fascism. We can't go back and start again, undo the damage that our governments' policies have wrought over the years. The first casualty has been Arafat and the possibility of a secular and moderate Palestinian state.
At the beginning a distinction must be made. Sontag discusses war photography within two very different rubrics, while failing to draw the distinction, that of information/news and that of art. I am uncomfortable even discussing such photography as art. One speaks of a terrible beauty I am incapable of respecting. Any consideration of this photography in the realm of the aesthetic amounts to a sublimation spawned by an inability to contemplate the photo as an actuality. It is fascinating, horrifying, but it is not pretty. It is not a painting. I see a courage in these photographs -- by way of the photographers emotional and physical wherewithal --, I see a commitment to documentation, I see a manipulation of framing and focus, but I cannot distinguish an art of inspired creation. Discussions of the artistic merit of any photography aside, how comfortable can one be with any photojournalist’s claim that their task is an artistic one. It is an act of exposure. Surely some photography is more accomplished than others, just as the quality of journalism is varied. War journalism may be literary, but it is never literature, the same for photography. Detaching war photography from its immediate function of portrayal is already separating the viewer from any degree of the meaningful interaction with which it is already so bereft. Now, ever since the yellow journalism of Pulitzer and Hearst, news has been more narrative than it has been expository. What we are ingesting is irrefutably real, but it is presented in a manner to make that real palatable, a palatability understandably necessitating a subtle distancing -- if not outright separation -- from any trauma. General Sherman has famously remarked ‘war is hell.’ Well perhaps for him the participant, but what has war become for us if not entertainment? Think of its presentation. recall the coverage of the gulf war; “Operation Desert Storm” sounds like a video game; “Stormin’ Norman,” an action hero; and the sinister super-villain Saddam! Each network would emblazon their coverage with an omnipresent tagline “America at War,” They would also have a piece of somber, but catchy music as segue to and from commercial breaks. (thank Life: the Movie by Neal Gabler for much of these thoughts) Newspapers provide the cheapest of synopses with editorials minimally critical and primarily full of an approbation smacking of propaganda. Today one expects to open the Daily News and hear our national anthem play like with those fucking greeting cards.
Shit. this is a complicated issue and it is one Sontag cannot do justice with even in 25,000 words. Ok, so the concept of nationalism enforces a need for an awareness with the goings-on of our “great Nation.” One cannot comfortably be an American --while investing such designation with any meaning -- and be left in the dark about what “we’re” up to. News keeps us connected. Now we’re smart enough to know news is not objective. (Where is the coverage of modern protest?) Now, I never really enjoy getting inside the heads of the mindless social fray, but what kind of informational nutrition do they crave? Something thorough and painless. The long-winded CNN “extensive coverage” that reveal nothing, but involve the viewer to the extent that he is a good American dutifully spending his leisure time plopped in front of a television or newspaper digesting repetitive information. It’s like going to church or something, obligatory, boring, almost ceremonial. All those hours in Iowa spent slack-jawed and teary eyed in front of the boob tube on 09.11.01. Now, what of the educated bourgeois? They need a more direct interaction. They are more thorough going and crave some degree of intellectual involvement, not simply lifeless repositories of ,well, whatever everybody else seems to be thinking these days. Even if they eventuate in populist opinion they will have exposed themselves to the facts adequately to have developed an independent rhetoric. They are Pro-active! War photography is the window to this, and I mean that mostly in the metaphoric sense, but kind of literally too, you dig? They are there! They see the “horrors.” Their opinions are incomplete with the ingredient of image. One must SEE in addition to read. After all, we process reality primarily through vision. These images add emotion, the all-important “human-interest” component that the opinions crave in order to separate said rhetoric from the icy chambers of the intellectual. What’s essential is this: their experience with these picturesque horrors are mediated in accordance with opinions already well established. “I have seen what’s going on, but I think it’s worth it because.... Look at all those dead people, this is why I oppose! J’accuse and I may do so because I’ve seen!” blah blah blahSo who REALLY looks at photography and in its light thinks OH, the horrors of war, it must be stopped! Virginia Woolf? Susan Sontag? They are predisposed to critiquing the atrocities of modernity to begin with. It sways no one -- ok maybe the naive or badly informed. Situation: A history teacher shows a sixth grade class the photo of the blinded infantry men clutching their useless eyes and each others’ shoulders. “Yes, children war is indeed awful, but this is the price we must pay to be free. Look at the theater of sacrifice! Admire! Love the USA!” Situation: Conservative Pops and hippie daughter look at American soldiers butchering women children in Vietnam. Daughter: Oh, the futility, the inhumanity. Pops: I’ll tell you what’s inhuman and futile, damn red communist bastards. They both stare at the photo with equal intensity. It is the film of a book that they’ve already read. It is the photograph of a memory they already have. I think of war photography functioning in the realm of revelation or evidence and I come up mostly empty. Maybe the photos of death camps, but only because they had been so previously sheathed in secrecy and the enormity of the horror is unbelievable without documentation. But in no one way does the photography bring you inside the experience in any way meaningful. Any discussion of war photography as a mechanism through which to SHARE experience is obtuse. It only illiterates, satiates this human need for the drama of visualization that is part and parcel of information. Evil needs a face. I’m not saying this photography is only superficial, but what constitutes its discourse is not gathered from things signified in the photograph, but upon pre-existing conviction. It is the skin, but it cannot be the skin alone, it is the skin stretched around the body, the intricate organs of understanding.
Think of the droves of white people lining up to stare with disapproval at photos of hanged African Americans. This is penance for those with an active interest in civil liberties. now think of the smiling white people in those very photographs. Now invert the circumstances and historical contexts of the poor southern folk with the liberal artsy New Yorks. Susan Sontag as poor housewife licking a lollipop as the Negro twirls in the tree top. Sally Jo Sue clutching her Prada bowling ball, white knuckled and shaking her head. “Now how could they have ever done that to a fellow human?” Sally says. Susan believes in showing almost-animals the order if things.War photography gives us a chance to pause and reflect on something we already “know.”I’m down with criticizing those fancy French men who kill EVERYTHING with their immaculately choreographed discourse. But Sontag’s essay is not the place for it. She concludes her essay, and rightfully so, with opinions that would mirror their own. War photography is not real. If post-modernity is “breathtakingly provincial” we are the province where it holds court. Stare at a photo of the death camps and repeat, “this really happened.” Do you believe it? Once a man lost his penis to a jealous wife. Once a building fell down and lots of stock brokers died because there was work to be done. Once a skaters husband took a pipe to the knees of America’s sweetheart. Once Marlon Brando had an Indian accept an Oscar. Once we dropped a bomb and Asians turned to ashes...Take a picture. OOOH, isn’t that awful? That really happened, ya’ know? Did it?! Yes. That’s horribly interesting.I previously mentioned feeling invigorated during the days of 9/11. Things ACTUALLY happened, but then they didn’t and I was glad. They have competitions and architectural expos dedicated to planning what will replace WTC. The original architect could be heard days later on CNN saying, I think we need to build it up bigger and better and show them what America is made of; what America’s all about! What is that? denial, shoving atrocity under the rug in the name of maintaining a certain image of fortitude and industry? The months after 9/11 have consisted of our leaders attempting to ensure that photographs of 9/11 will never become real. That the reality will be placed back in Iraq and Afghanistan “where it belongs.” They’ll build a garish skyscaper and not a memorial park because they want us to forget the whole thing REALLY happened. Winona Ryder emerges from the courtroom looking like Jackie O after she was found guilty by a jury of her peers. Lucy Applebee was a manager at Windows to the World and you can see her family with Katie Couric crying. These are dead terrorists, the only good kind, yeah, yeah!... I remember a photo in the daily news. It was of Bin Laden flanked by his two main advisers. One was killed. There was a big red X over the deceased Taliban leader with the headline “One down, Two to go.” This is me getting on the bus for my first day of school. these are bodies in a pit. This is a girl crying, surrounded by dust and the kind of houses (shacks, really) you will never find me in. Here is a woman named Bella Regal, she is to be married. Which of these examples could your mind occupy, could your sense of empiricism encompass? (Sorry for the artsy self indulgences)If another war starts we will see sad, sick photos of it and think “oh, the humanity.” Behind the sympathy -- which is not false, but certainly not empathy --, behind the politicizing and righteous indignation and self-reflexive experience with the photo the result of convoluted philosophies will be this: “I hope this never happens to me.” And if it did, I wouldn’t want someone taking my fucking picture.
I made the mistake of leaving the New Yorker at home this morning, as I read most of it yesterday and wanted to bring something else on the morning commute. Nonetheless, I will give this a shot.First, I think that highlighting the distinction between the photographs-as-news and photographs-as-art is incredibly important, and am very glad that you did so. Thinking about the article in those terms clarifies a lot, and I completely missed that one on my own. Though I want to recomplicate it by noting that many of the photographs-as-news are turned into artworks via presentations in gallery or museum settings (even if it is a historical museum and not an art museum.) Second, many of the war photographers Sontag mentions are very well known for their art photos, and it is difficult to separate their wartime from peacetime work, both of which are informed by at least similar sensibilities. Yes, 'shooting' a picture (such an apt word in this discussion, no?) on the battlefield is incredibly different from a still life or portrait which takes time to pose/create, but Robert Capa is Robert Capa. The Magnum photo agency has always included important 'art' photographers in its ranks. That is why in my response I emphasized the importance of attempting to hold both in one's head at the same time: "There is value in the aesthetic value of pictures, as long as that value is taken in hand with all of the other data -- explicit and implicit -- the photograph imparts." To that end, I think my characterization of the situation described in your quote -- "Detaching war photography from its immediate function of portrayal is already separating the viewer from any degree of the meaningful interaction with which it is already so bereft" -- describes a scenario where perhaps the viewer is a little more detached, but in a way that serves to widen the net of interpretation and allow more links to be made. (Does that make sense?) Responding "meaningfully" (can this be read as 'emotionally'?) to the work is important, but, much like a completely intellectual/cold/distanced engagement, it is limiting.Regarding the shift in news from exposition to narration (and I'm only playing devil's advocate here, not necessarily advancing any personal opinions because I haven't really given this much thought): what would you suggest to replace this 'narrativization'? It seems that some form of narrative is necessary, not so much to make news palatable (though I think it does do that), but to make it understandable. Not everyone operates on the same level of interpretive sophistication.. hm, I'm losing my thought here. I guess I am just curious as to what you would pose as an alternative to narrative news.On to the next one.
I have a slight problem (and I think you slightly problematize in your post as well) with the split between 'the mindless social fray' and 'the educated bourgeois[ie].' There are definitely people (I know many) who are uneducated in the traditional sense, yet are intellectually active in processing all amounts of received information, from the television as well as other sources. There are also many formally educated bourgeois persons who use their status as a way of granting themselves comfort, by saying "I know how to think critically, I was taught that in school," and then living their lives as if they are beyond the need for such processing. I am sure you know this too, but I wanted to foreground it nonetheless.I don't know if I want to come up as an ardent Sontag supporter, because there are invariably critiques to be made, but I think that her essay addresses the issue of confirming-what-we-already-know that you bring up in this response. Again, I don't have it with me, but near the beginning, while discussing Woolf and her (imaginary) correspondent, I think she makes the same point that you do: (war) photographs are used to confirm what we already know, and that our interpretation of them is almost invariably supported by a predetermined plane of mutual understanding. So, then, what to do? It's a good question. But I think that in Sontag's article, and maybe also in your response here, there is an assumption that what is to be arrived at is a disdain for war. I think that while that is one possible scenario -- and not an inherently bad one, as long as it is then used as a building block for further action (intellectual or bodily) to intervene against war -- there are others, such as the importance of a discussion like this one. Yes, those of us who are invested in these issues -- who are "predisposed to critiquing the atrocities of modernity" -- are obviously going to respond first, and perhaps loudest, but if someone else can be drawn into the debate then I consider the whole endeavor a success, however 'small' in the grand scheme of things.
Of course I'll forgive the artsy self-indulgences. They're equally interesting, though a little more difficult for me to respond to because (a) my all-too-analytical mind doesn't often work that way, and (b) it's a little more oblique and takes more time for me to think about and respond to. Which are sort of the same thing, but anyway. It doesn't mean I don't want to, but let me pick out one or two things here that I can immediately grab on to."Think of the droves of white people lining up to stare with disapproval at photos of hanged African Americans. This is penance for those with an active interest in civil liberties." I agree that it's a form of penance, a way of assuaging guilt. Do you think it is effective? Does it accomplish anything, either for black people or white people? This is a whole other can of worms, I know, but I'm curious, especially in light of Sontag's ruminations on photography and memory. Does the presentation of these images accomplish something different from, say, the presentation of the narratives of persons who lived through this moment in American history, both black and white? Is one 'accomplishment' more valid than the other? Does the use of images as the main vehicle for this penance/guilt-washing process limit the change that can come from it?Much like in the first post, I think the idea of pushing the site of "reality" back into Afghanistan and Iraq as a way of protecting the stability of the United States (and its industry/prosperity/power, etc.) is incredibly important. Thank you for bringing it up. The idea of keeping the violence on other shores, where it can be quarantined and studied for meaning, seems incredibly central to the current American enterprise, yet very much missing from the current dialog. One article that does touch on this idea can be found somewhere in Slate's archives. In it, the author states that the near-miss attacks on Israeli airlines in Kenya a week and a half ago represent a clearer danger to the United States than terrorists using planes as 'bombs,' a la 9.11.01. The former can happen anytime, anywhere, with little to stop it from happening (aside from on-board missile detection, and really, if a plane has to have that, how many people are going to be willing to step on it in the first place?), whereas we can be reasonably assured that what happened last September will not happen again. Here is another article I found while searching that is similar in content. What happens when the United States is no longer above other states on the 'playing field' of international war and terrorism? What does this do to both our policies (domestic and foreign)? What does this do to our use of war/disaster images, which now might not be situated against exotic/foreign backdrops?Oddly enough, I just walked back into my boss' office and saw a book on his desk titled Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops us from Seeing by Darian Leader. I wonder what this might introduce to our conversation. Anyway, back to you, and thanks for responding.
(Excerpt from Samuel Weber: "War, Terrorism, and Spectacle")War and terrorism have traditionally been associated with one another, but to link them both to spectacle constitutes a relatively new phenomenon and strikes me then as a distinctively contemporary topic. To link does not, of course, mean to identify: it does not suggest that war, terrorism, and spectacle are the same. Yet it implies that there is a necessary relationship between them, and that much is new. But it is new in a very specific way. For although war has traditionally been associated with pageantry, parades, intimidation, and demonstrations of all kinds, never before perhaps has what I would call "theatricalization" played such an integral role in the strategic planning itself. Of course, such a linkage was not selected out of a vacuum. The destruction of the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon on September 11 has resulted in what the American president Bush has declared to be a "War against Terrorism." And the "theater of operations" in and on which this "war" is being fought encompasses not just Afghanistan, but also the media of the world: in the United States, Europe, but also in Qatar and throughout the world. It is often said that the attacks of September 11 changed everything. It certainly changed the perceptions of those living in the United States who were convinced that "it can't happen here": namely, that organized, mass destruction was something that was exclusively limited to the nightly news. The bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, of course, marked a first breach in this widely held belief. Yet it could still be regarded as the exception that confirms the rule. That rule, however, collapsed altogether with the imploding towers on September 11.[...] for a general public whose collective memory these days seems measured in months rather than in years, much less decades or centuries, and which is shrinking rapidly all the time for this public, organized violence that attempts to challenge the prevailing social order as a whole, appears to be an entirely new and unprecedented phenomenon. Such a perception fits very nicely with the War against Terrorism, which was the response of the U.S. government to the attacks of September 11. Its response follows an established pattern. This is not the first such "war" declared by American governments. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson declared a War against Poverty, while pursuing the less metaphorical war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Succeeding presidents declared the War against Drugs. Now, we have the War against Terrorism. As commonly understood, war generally implies a conflict between states. Notable exceptions, of course, are civil and guerrilla wars, in which the conflict is not between states, but within a single state. In both cases, it is state power that of an organized polity with a delimited territory that is at stake. From a point of view that associates war with a constituted state, terrorism can be seen as its excluded other. For what is generally designated as terrorism is the more or less organized use of violence by entities other than established states. Terrorism is, of course, never merely a descriptive, constative term: it is an evaluative one. Traditionally the word is used to designate a violence considered to be illegitimate, evil, and morally reprehensible because it is exercised by nonstate organizations, groups, or individuals.
[...] If nation-states are constituted in violence, (for instance, through a "revolution") and maintained through the exercise of force, both external and domestic, then the difference between "terror" and "legitimate force" is never simply a neutral assessment, but rather a function of perspective, situation, interpretation, and evaluation. This does not mean that it is entirely arbitrary, of course, but rather that it is always relational: a function of its relation to other elements, never simply a judgment that can be self-contained. It can be noted, in this context, that the BBC World Service was sharply criticized recently by American authorities for its policy of using the word terrorism all too sparingly, at least by comparison with the American media. A longtime viewer-listener of the BBC - which I am - not has noted that over the past decades the BBC has rarely if ever referred to the IRA, for instance, as a terrorist organization. Despite such problems, however, terrorism continues to be defined as the enemy of the State as such: and if, as Carl Schmitt persuasively argues, the concept of the political is based on the identification of the "enemy," then this discursive practice amounts to nothing less than identifying the terrorist as the enabling other of the state: its negative justification, so to speak. The more powerful the terrorist organization(s), the more powerful the state in its military political security functions must become, and correspondingly, the weaker its civilian and civil functions must be made. Such a tendency takes on a special signification in a period when the traditional conception, if not functions of the nation-state are more in question than at any time probably since its inception. In the post cold war period of "globalization" and transnational capitalism, a new "enemy" seems to be needed to consolidate the role and to reinforce the legitimacy of nation-states that are ever more openly dependent on, and agents of, transnational corporate interests.[...] The notion of spectacle can, if we take the time to reflect a bit, help us describe just what is distinctive about International Terrorism being declared Public Enemy Number One. For in order for something to be a spectacle, it must, quite simply, take place, which is to say, it must be localizable. Whether inside, in a theater (of whatever kind), or outside, in the open, a spectacle must be placed in order to be seen (and heard). But the place, and taking-place of a spectacle is no ordinary locality not at least in the way place has traditionally been defined: namely, as a stable, self-contained container. For the stage or scene of a spectacle is never fully self-contained. To function as a stage or a scene, a place must itself take place in relation to another place, the place of spectators or of an audience. The space of a theater is divided into the space of the stage and that of the audience. This makes the place and taking-place of a spectacle singularly difficult to pin down, since, as Guy Debord put it, in his book The Society of the Spectacle (1967): "the world the spectacle holds up to view is at once here and elsewhere; it is the world of the commodity ruling over all lived experience. The commodity world is thus shown as it really is, for its logic is one with men's estrangement from one another and from. . . what they produce."[...] In the images of catastrophe that dominate broadcast media "news," the disunity is projected into the image itself, while the desired unity is reserved for the spectator off-scene (and for the media itself as global network). To support such identification and the binary opposition on which its success depends, images must appear to be clearly localizable, self-contained, and meaningful at the same time that they englobe destruction, mutilation, and implosion. They must contain and comprehend the catastrophes that thereby appear to be intelligible in and of themselves, without requiring the spectator to look elsewhere. The spectator thus can sustain the illusion of occupying a stable and enduring position that allows one to "stay the same" indefinitely. This is the moral of the story, whether it is called "Enduring Freedom" or "Infinite Justice."
The War against Terrorism is thus conducted in the name of enduring freedom as the freedom to remain the same, to keep one's place indefinitely. This is also the message of infinite justice: to remain indefinitely the same is to pursue the enemy relentlessly, without end, until he is cornered in his innermost redoubts and destroyed. The trajectory that leads from the Twin Towers to the caves of Tora Bora marks the will to power as a will to endure. This is the not-so-hidden religious subtext of the ostensibly secular War against Terrorism, which is above all a defense and an affirmation of "globalization" as the right to rule the earth. To rule the planet, one must survive. But to survive, one must rule. Western television (and often print) media appeal to their viewers by promising them the continued rule of such survival. "Stay with us: we'll be right back after the break." Stay with us and survive; leave us and perish. The spectacle of the Twin Towers imploding -- a phallic fate if there ever was one -- and of a portion of the Pentagon in ruins, broadcast in "real time," had two effects. On the one hand, it heightened the anxiety of the "break" on which the appeal of consumption is based. Consumer confidence was shattered, at least temporarily, and after a period of mourning, the official discourse had to urge all citizens not, as one might have expected, to "get back to work," but to "get back to consuming," and start spending again. The promise of immortality was broken, for the time being at least. Since precisely such traumatic breaks are at the origin of the compulsion to consume, the basic structure and process was not fundamentally altered as long as the putative cause of such anxiety could be located in an image, confined to a site, a stage or, rather, relegated to multiple sites and stages, but in succession, one after the other. This is the end of the military response to terrorism: it must be named (al-Qaeda), given a face (Osama bin Laden), and then above all located (Afghanistan, Tora Bora, Sudan, Somalia, etc.) in order then to be depicted, if possible, and destroyed.
...] On the other hand, when terrorism is defined as "international," it becomes more difficult to locate, situate, personify, and identify or, rather, it can only be located in sequence, one site after the other, not all at once. From this point on, the War against Terrorism becomes a scenario that unfolds step-by-step, yet intrinsically without end in its effort to bring the global enemy to "infinite justice." Almost from the beginning of this "war," the Bush administration asserted that the enemy was "international" in character, neither limited to one person, however important, nor to one state, however nefarious. Thus, the War against Terrorism, unlike the cold war, cannot be defined primarily as a war against a single state, the Soviet Union, or against its international emanation, the "Communist Conspiracy." It is not even a war against a single terrorist organization, however decentralized, such as al-Qaeda. International Terrorism englobes all the "rogue" states that for years have been designated by the U.S. State Department as aiding and abetting terrorism: Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and so on. What characterizes this policy is its continuing effort to tie terrorist networks to nation-states. This identification both supplies and supplants any discussion of other possible "causes," conditions, or ramifications. In this view, all of these can be located in the pathological behavior of individual "rogue" states, whose roguishness consists in their refusal to follow the norms of international behavior as laid down by the United States government. (In passing, it should be noted that the political use of the word rogue has an interesting history. The first time I became aware of the word was in relation to the assassination of President Kennedy, when it was used by investigators though certainly not by the government to describe elements of the government ["rogue" elements of the "intelligence" services or military] that might have acted secretly, outside the official chain of command. Later the term was used to designate states that did not comply with American expectations of proper political behavior, such as Libya, Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, and the like. In short, from a term designating the disunity of "official" state organizations, it became a designator of abnormal political-state behavior, a symptomatic development, to say the least.) In conclusion, the spectacle, at least as staged by the mainstream broadcast media, seeks simultaneously to assuage and exacerbate anxieties of all sorts by providing images on which anxieties can be projected, ostensibly comprehended, and above all removed. Schematically, the fear of death is encouraged to project itself onto the vulnerability of the other which as enemy is the other to be liquidated or subjugated. The viewer is encouraged to look forward and simultaneously forget the past; encouraged to identify with the ostensibly invulnerable perspective of the camera registering the earthbound destruction as blips tens of thousand of feet below. Such a position seems to assure the triumph of the spectator over the mortality of earthbound life.The trails of the B-52s in the stratosphere high above the earth announce the Demise of the Caves and the Second Coming of the Towers. And with these Good Tidings, the first global spectacle of the twenty-first century appears to approach a Happy Ending, at least on our television screens. Yet it leaves a gnawing suspicion: that if the spectacle seems to be drawing to a close, for the time being at least, the scenario itself is far from over.++++Samuel Weber, "War, Terrorism, and Spectacle: of Towers and Caves," The South Atlantic Quarterly 101:3 (Summer 2002), Special Issue: Medium Cool, ed. Andrew McNamara and Peter Krapp, 449-458Samuel Weber is the Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Legend of Freud (1982), Institution and Interpretation (1987), Return to Freud: Jacques Lacan's Dislocation of Psychoanalysis (1991), and Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media (1996). He is about to publish Theatricality As Medium (2003) and is finishing a book-length study of Walter Benjamin's "-abilities."
shit...now must recover magazine from roommate and read... :)
shit...now must recover magazine from roommate and read... :)
Ok, if I can avoid LJ-enforced segmentation then I'm just going to respond to everything in one entry, as my mind tends to unify rather than classify. The sort of thinking I'm engaged within, specific to this debate, is pragmatic. I don't even see how the artistic merit of war photography applies. What is an artistic consideration anyway? The central question in the Sontag essay, for me, is: can war photography facilitate an emotional comprehension of the photograph's subject. Can the ingestion of these images catalyze a glimpse into the experience which the frame captures? Do these images have artistic merit? Sure. Can the kind of viewing experience Sontag ultimately finds impossible EVER hope to occur within a gallery, behind a champagne flute with art theory discourse circulating? Fuck no. Any distance between a war image within Newsweek and that same image on a gallery wall is HUGE. The conditions of the spectator dictate the way in which it is assessed. Later, I wanna come back to art and its possibilities of representing war via photography with staged imagery, but I instinctually feel that this impulse to place war documentation on the walls of galleries is a sick one. People paying money for the photograph of crippled, starving 3rd world children?! Jesus Christ! Sure, take the picture so we can see what it's like, but considering it behind the view of art collector is vulgar, disquieting, to be avoided. It's not art. Just imagine being one of the photographed, the mother of the dead soldier and that image being displayed in a gallery, in an art collector's UES penthouse. It's amounts to a rape of an ACTUAL individual's most private and sublime of moments. One can find a kind of comfort in that rape when it is being represented for the auspices of documentation, but becoming the pure object of art; I just can't accept that. It is not art.
I think you're an art history/theory student, right? hrrm, so we're coming from different places. I have a degree in Lit and Film Theory history/theory...but an image is an isolated thing. Sontag states and I agree that narrative if far more capable of hoping to approximate a fleeting presentation of war. For me the book would be Mailer's THE NAKED AND THE DEAD and the film: Ingmar Bergman's SHAME, mostly because it is from a civilian perspective that I find much more relatable and of course Bergman's insight and artistry in and of itself. An image cannot annotate the soul behind what is documented. I hope my argument is founded upon an idea more sophisticated that desensitization, but perhaps it is not. Any vicarious transport war photography offers is shallow. What war photography is saying is that this is where you are not. SOntag tells us our reactions are not so much precipitated by pity as they are fear. Bingo! The image conveyed is geographically specific, but registered primarily as that area which is war torn, uncivilized. It reminds us of the fruits and the perils of our privilege. War is the norm, but what do we fucking know about it? War is the norm so peace will be OUR everyday norm. The theatre of war can upset by extension. Maybe a grandfather died or something, but without participation and the callow sentamentalization required to achieve any meaningful vicarious perspective, what effect is there really? I think the statement that post 9/11 has been a perpetual quest to ensure it never happened is essential. The "war on terrorism" relies upon America's terrorism, but that's not terrorism because we're empowered, entitled. Terror is only Terror in any meaningful, destabilizing sense to those who are strangers to it, terror is to be expected in the middle east. Bombs to them are like pigeon shit to us.I can't get at this via pure theortics. I mean, I can, but I dont want to. There's volumes of theory that would defend photography as a noble expose of those things we haven't seen, that it's doing an admirable job of capturing atrocities we'd otherwise be foreign to. Dish it. Lord knows I'm one jaded mother fucker, but where does this photography take us to in terms of consideration that didn't previously exist before the atrocious vision of said child exploding wherever I am not? What's revealing is SOntag's discussion of the assumption that any supine figure in these photographs is already dead. These photographs already have become a genre whose elements we can anticipate. Oh yes, yes, yes...she and he and he and he and she are dead. We don't cock our heads and attempt to locate any sign of life from these bodies, we dont place ourselves in these situations in a manner wherein we can hope to glean a contextually informed notion of exactly what is depicted behind the immediacy of the now hackneyed image. No, he and she and he and he and she are dead.Oh, I think the article you posted is interesting, but pretty separate, at least from the way Im looking at matters. 'need nap. But Im curious….how do you see war photography overcoming the obstacles of a life incubated in priviledge and safety and the dissemination of these very images, both real and imaginary? DO you think meaning is already somewhere in there? Or are you thinking of some creative spectatorship
One of the difficulties I'm having is that I agree with you at the same time as I think the way you are arguing your point limits the possibility for other interpretations that I feel are valid. To wit:"The central question in the Sontag essay, for me, is: can war photography facilitate an emotional comprehension of the photograph's subject. Can the ingestion of these images catalyze a glimpse into the experience which the frame captures? "I agree that this is the central question of her essay, and I think we've both established that her answer is 'no' (which somewhat implicates her essay in its own critique of Debord and Baudrillard.)"Can the kind of viewing experience Sontag ultimately finds impossible EVER hope to occur within a gallery, behind a champagne flute with art theory discourse circulating? Fuck no."I think that here you are making a certain judgment that states something along the lines of 'one kind of impossibility is worse than another.' Sontag finds this emotional comprehension impossible, and I think we both pretty much agree with her. (Right?) So what difference does it make if that impossibility occurs at home reading the newspaper or at the gallery? Your example of an UES playboy with war photos on the wall and champagne in hand is a bit extreme. Especially when it is some of the very same 'art theory discourse' that first brought many of the issues we are now debating to the public consciousness (and perhaps first brought the ideas that became this essay to Sontag.) It's difficult for me to argue my side because it appears that I'm defending something morally bankrupt, but my counterargument is that no one viewer or situation (in the West, at least) is exempt from this bankruptcy. Perhaps this is the source of the impossibility of emotional comprehension. I guess the difficult question is: how do we transcend this?
First, let me say that I'm really enjoying this discussion. Even if it is incredibly mediated and time-consuming, it is so much better than not having it at all. Before I get into the specifics of this post, also would like to point out one thing that caught my eye:"I think you're an art history/theory student, right? hrrm, so we're coming from different places. I have a degree in Lit and Film Theory history/theory...but an image is an isolated thing."You make a correct assumption that I am an art history/theory student. But the wording you choose is interesting, labeling me a student and identifying yourself as having a degree. It was an unconscious move, I assume, but it places us on different planes as we continue through this discussion. I do consider myself a student, but I also have earned a degree. Anyway, I don't want to get too bogged down in details...Somehow I feel that your comment about the 'artistry' of Bergman's film (which I admit I have not seen) validates my earlier comments about the aesthetic value of a photograph (or film or television program or other type of image) as something worth considering in conjunction with its other values."The image conveyed is geographically specific, but registered primarily as that area which is war torn, uncivilized. It reminds us of the fruits and the perils of our privilege. War is the norm, but what do we fucking know about it? War is the norm so peace will be OUR everyday norm."I think that this quote touches on why I felt the article I posted was relevant. I think that Weber's article, though not as rhetorically powerful as Sontag's, illuminates many of the social and political ideas that are the flip side to Sontag's essay. Taken together, the two articles sort of become the uber-article that I was looking for when I originally reached the end of Sontag's piece in The New Yorker."What's revealing is Sontag's discussion of the assumption that any supine figure in these photographs is already dead. These photographs already have become a genre whose elements we can anticipate. Oh yes, yes, yes...she and he and he and he and she are dead. We don't cock our heads and attempt to locate any sign of life from these bodies, we dont place ourselves in these situations in a manner wherein we can hope to glean a contextually informed notion of exactly what is depicted behind the immediacy of the now hackneyed image. No, he and she and he and he and she are dead."Yes, that is quite revealing. It sets up another oppositional dialectic: the people portrayed are dead, and we are not dead, so we cannot connect with the people in the photograph. Despite the multi-faceted nature of these essays, it comes down to oppositions: here versus there, theater of disaster versus theater of peace, viewer versus subject, alive versus dead, civil versus uncivil, etc. How does all of this nuance seemingly breakdown into these pairings? Reading Weber's article, I get the creeping feeling that this perpetual reduction to an "us" versus a "them" does something to uphold the "impossibility of emotional comprehension" I mentioned in my latest (above) response. Perhaps opening up these dualities is part of the key to how we make this 'impossible' possible.To get off the topic of Sontag for a moment, this is from Weber: "Such a tendency takes on a special signification in a period when the traditional conception, if not functions of the nation-state are more in question than at any time probably since its inception. In the post cold war period of "globalization" and transnational capitalism, a new "enemy" seems to be needed to consolidate the role and to reinforce the legitimacy of nation-states that are ever more openly dependent on, and agents of, transnational corporate interests." Not that I think globalization is the 'opening up' I'm hoping for, but maybe it's a sign that something like that was beginning to bubble up? Between "post-______" cracking open all these closed histories and globalization and yadda yadda, maybe it was starting to happen. Which makes me even more concerned about the effects of 9.11.01 and our response to it.God I come across as such an optimist. I don't think I mind that too much, though.
What a great discussion! I recently finished a chapter of my dissertation (which is way, way, way too long) about the Pulitzer prize-winning photograph of the Vietnamese napalm victim, and I deal with the same issues Sontag does in her New Yorker essay. Unfortunately, I'm typing on a crappy keyboard and it's distracting. However, a few years ago I wrote this column for Punk Planet about the recent publication and exhibition of lynching photography. Fodder for discussion, perhaps?xo Mimi
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