Amidst the twaddle and bilge written about modern “media culture” (e.g., bad academese, exhibit one , and bad academese, exhibit two ) some serious and insightful commentary on the role of images in everyday life still somehow manages to get written. One of the many morals of the past century must surely be that “we” have a weird fascination not only for images of celebrities and of the “lifestyles” of the insanely wealthy, but also for photographs of “Others” – preferably when they are compromised, suffering, in pain, and /or dying. However disturbing, this fascination is nothing new (e.g., Goya’s “Disasters of War” ).
The photographs taken at the Abu Ghraib prison, the internet broadcast of beheadings, and the lynching of American soldiers have collectively posed some truly basic but interesting and knotty questions: should pictures of the dead and dying be published? Should we even be looking at these kinds of images (and if so, to what end? and if not, what is lost? – is it better to see these kinds of military engagements from afar, as cinematic fireworks raining down on some far away city, or to see the casualties see up close, made to face the mutilated bodies of the dead…)? and finally, the big question: why are we so drawn to such things, anyway? Luc Sante wrote one of the most compelling essays on the Abu Ghraib scandal, which can be found here . The indispensible thoughts of Susan Sontag on “regarding the pain of others” can be found here. If you want to read an intelligent critique/commentary on Sontag’s book, (it’s an email conversation b/w Luc Sante and novelist Jim Lewis), you can find it here . Rightly or wrongly, no iconic images seem to have emerged from 9/11 (unlike the Abu Ghraib scandal, which produced at least one remarkably iconic image, the one you no doubt know, which can be found here . Art critic Abigail Solomon-Godeau has written a brilliant essay on one image that might fit the bill. That weirdly beautiful image is a photograph of the falling body of a man positioned precisely between the two towers, plunging Icarus-like to the pavement far below. Although this photograph was initially reprinted widely (the NY Times, for example, published it), it was quickly taken out of circulation, and has rarely been seen since. You can find that photograph, along with an essay by the photographer, here . There clearly IS something unsettling about finding images of catastrophe and suffering somehow beautiful (although one wonders about how an image like this will be viewed in the future…we seem to require an icon to suggest national trauma: one thinks of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother). Anyhoo, all discussions about what images mean tend to hinge upon (economic, social, aesthetic, or historical context); if you want to indulge in the rare pleasure of viewing photographs some guy found and put up on the internet (i.e., photographs with no context whatsoever), you can find some great ones here .