by Jon Lackman | 14 May 2007 | Conferences, Photography
In the most recent issue of History of Photography (30:4), Allison Moore contributes a report from the symposium “Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis,” a recording of which is available online:
As soon as the panels began, the need to define atrocity became apparent. Is war in itself an atrocity, or is it only an excess of war — for example, torture — that counts? (Getting a little carried away rhetorically, Brian Wallis called for an erotics of atrocity) … ‘Becoming Iconic, the first panel … discussed the questions ‘How do atrocity images get to be seen in public? How do certain of these images become iconic?’ … Today, Wallis said, most atrocity photographs do not see the light of day because of censorship, and those images that become iconic are the least offensive … [Griselda] Pollock, the sole art historian on the panel, fittingly introduced a methodological tool of art historical analysis in her discussion of Aby Warburg’s three levels of iconology and psychoanalysis … [She argued] that photographic images are unbearable for their directness and that they perpetuate violence against the viewing subject …
The second panel, ‘Atrocity and Information,’ asked speakers to consider the questions: ‘What can images of atrocity tell us? What can’t they tell us?’ … [Geoffrey] Batchen worried that photography can too easily turn human suffering into beauty … Echoing [John] Berger, [Peggy Phelan] said that the question such photographs pose is: what are you, the viewer, going to do about what you see? (For Berger, however, this question is dangerous in that it raises the issue of the viewer’s morality instead of forcing the viewer to recognize the picture as the consequence of a political situation.) …
In the afternoon session … ‘Photography in the World: A Conversation’ … [Ellen] Tolmie criticized the de-historicization of famine photographs, noting that the iconic ‘starving child’ photograph came to prominence during Nigeria’s civil war from 1967-1970 … Although taken of certain people during a specific time in one particular nation’s history, the ‘starving child’ photograph has served to present all of Africa as a timeless, eternally suffering continent without politics or history … The importance of naming the anonymous person in a photograph and thereby returning that person’s subjectivity was argued in opposition to the importance of how the picture is used, and what good it can do in the world …
[In the] next panel, ‘Response and Responsibility’ … [D.J.] Clark also spoke of Oxfam’s attempt to train indigenous photographers to represent famines in a particular, positive style marked by the Oxfam aesthetic, which Clark referred to as Oxfam’s and other NGO’s attempts to ‘brand famine’ …
Keynote speaker Philip Gourevitch … cautioned against glorifying the past … arguing that newspapers have never plastered pictures of dead Americans across their pages … [He also] remind[ed] the audience that not all those who die horrible deaths in photographs are worthy of sympathy …
‘Picturing Atrocity’ was an exceptional symposium in so far as it raised a kaleidoscope of issues, perspectives and specific situations with regard to pictures of atrocity. However, a strong absence was felt in the lack of inclusion of a non-Western perspective, other than that offered by Alfredo Jaar. Although much was said about imagery of the ‘Third World,’ and in particular about the huge and diverse continent of Africa, no one from any of Africa’s fifty-four nations was present to offer a critical insider’s perspective. Okwui Enwezor would have been an obvious choice as a speaker; he has written searing criticisms of ‘Afro-pessimism,’ or the ways in which only negative images of Africa are represented in the media.”
