Picturing Atrocity

by Batchen, Geoffrey; Gidley, Mick; Miller, Nancy K.; Prosser, Jay

• ISBN13: 9781861898722
• ISBN10: 186189872X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-06-15
• Publisher: Reaktion Books

Summary

Ever since the landmark publication of Susan Sontag's On Photography,it has been impossible to look at photographs, particularly those of violence and suffering, without questioning our role as photographic voyeur. Are we desensitized by the proliferation of these images, and does this make it easier to be passive and uninvolved? Or do the images immediately stir our own sense of justice and act as a call to arms? Are we consuming the suffering of others as a form of intrigue? Or is it an act of empathy? To answer these questions, Picturing Atrocitybrings together essays from some of the foremost writers and critics on photography today, including Rebecca Solnit, Alfredo Jaar, Ariella Azoulay, Shahidul Alam, John Lucaites, Robert Hariman, and Susan Meiselas, to offer close readings of images that reveal the realities behind the photographs, the subjects, and the photographers. From the massacre of the Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee to the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, from famine in China to apartheid in South Africa, Picturing Atrocityexamines a broad spectrum of photographs. Each of the essays focuses specifically on an iconic image, offering a distinct approach and context, in order to enable us to look again-and this time more closely-at the picture. In addition, four photo-essays showcase the work of photographers involved in the making of photographs of brutality as well as the artists' own reflections on these images. Together these essays cover the historical and geographical range of atrocity photographs and respond to current concerns about such disturbing images; they probe why we as viewers feel compelled to look even when our instinct might be to look away. Picturing Atrocityis an important read, not just for insights into photography, but for its reflections on human injustice and suffering. In keeping with that aim, all royalties from the book will be donated to Amnesty International.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 7
Response and Responsibility	p. 15
Words Can Kill: Haiti and the Vocabulary of Disaster	p. 17
Visible and Invisible Scars of Wounded Knee	p. 25
Severed Hands: Authenticating Atrocity in the Congo, 1904-13	p. 39
Atrocity and Action: The Performative Force of the Abu Ghraib Photographs	p. 51
Becoming Iconic	p. 63
Photographing Atrocity: Becoming Iconic?	p. 65
The Iconography of Famine	p. 79
A Single Image of Famine in China	p. 93
History at a Standstill: Agency and Gender in the Image of Civil Rights	p. 105
Photographing Atrocity	p. 115
Body on a Hillside	p. 117
Crossfire	p. 123
Circulation and Public Culture	p. 133
The Iconic Image of the Mushroom Cloud and the Cold War Nuclear Optic	p. 135
The Girl in the Photograph: The Visual Legacies of War	p. 147
Atrocity, the "As If," and Impending Death from the Khmer Rouge	p. 155
The Falling Man	p. 167
Ordinary Atrocities	p. 177
Street Photographs in Crisis: Cernauti, Romania, c. 1943	p. 179
Picturing the Perpetrator	p. 189
War Trophy Photographs: Proof or Pornography?	p. 201
Picturing an "Ordinary Atrocity": The Sharpeville Massacre	p. 209
Atrocity Askance	p. 225
Looking Askance	p. 227
Documentary Pictorial: Luc Delahaye's Taliban, 2001	p. 241
The Execution Portrait	p. 249
Toward a Hyperphotography	p. 261
The Afterlife of Photographs	p. 273
Lament of the Images	p. 275
Photographic Interference	p. 283
References	p. 293
Contributors	p. 313
Acknowledgments	p. 317
Photo Acknowledgments	p. 318
Permissions	p. 319
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