Trapped in Subjectivity

This is an essay I wrote for a literature class about war narratives, but we also focused largely on the nature of the photograph and how it has drastically changed the way we conceptualize our world.  This barely scratches the surface.  If you enjoy it, be sure to check out some of the source (and related) material: Sontag's article; Butler's article; Ashley Gilbertson's photography; New Yorker interview with Sabrina Harman; and if you're really interested I will mail you my copy of Regarding the Pain of Others at the end of the quarter in March.  Enjoy.

 

Photographic Memory: The Limits of Understanding

Has your life ever flashed before your eyes?  Perhaps this particular expression is reserved for near-death situations, but in a more banal sense our lives and memories are constantly recalled for our own reference.  If we think back to childhood, for example, perhaps we imagine fragments of a birthday party or a family vacation.  We might remember a particular sensation of joy or sadness as we re-imagine each event, yet as we go deeper it becomes more difficult to remember each aspect that constitutes a memory; ultimately they are reduced to images.  An image serves as a quick referential for the mind.  It is easy to recall a visual memory, yet much more difficult to create a semantic interpretation or understanding.  Yet how many of these memories are images from actual experience, and how many are reconstituted from a picture that was taken by a photographer?  I think back to my childhood and I remember carving pumpkins with my sister on the front step of our home.  The memory seems vivid to me; I can recall scooping the pumpkin seeds out and how the sticky contents felt in my hand.  Yet there is an anomaly: I can see my face in this memory -- I am staring at myself.  My remembrance of this event is either partially or entirely reconstructed from a photograph presumably taken by my mother.  I may not even be old enough to realize what a camera is, yet there is something demanding my attention.  It is difficult to discern whether I am looking at my mother (“say cheese!”) or the camera, but I must concede that the very presence of a camera affected the scene.  That is to say – my memory of what really happened is forever altered.

In a broader sense, the power of the photograph, its emergence as a ubiquitous presence in our daily lives, has become an inextricable force that affects how we conceptualize our world.  Photos allow us to categorize each part of the world in order to have some complete knowledge base, yet this is an overwhelming task; our minds simply can’t arrange that much data.  Consequently, the constant bombardment of photography has arguably resulted in numbness, especially when dealing with graphic images.  This callousness can lead to some complex difficulties, especially when regarding the atrocious events that took place in our history and are still taking place in the world.  Sontag asserts that the purpose of these photos of wartime is to shock the viewer so much that they would never perpetuate the acts depicted within.  To her, the exposure of war and genocide should be a deterrent.  However, she concedes that there is a culturally embedded voyeurism that complicates the issue; we don’t want to see it but we can’t look away.  This is further complicated by the fact that these representations of war are too removed from our actual lives that there is a dehumanizing effect at work.  We can’t truly empathize with the victims in the photos because atrocious acts are not happening to us.  This eventual separation of us and them has created a sort of superiority complex. In essence, Americans feel superior in two ways: terrible acts only happen in the ignorant parts of the world, and additionally in that our government takes on the role of “world police” in order to quell the fighting in other parts of the world.  Looking at the gamut of photography from the recent occupation of Iraq, it could be viewed that much of the horror is a direct result of the presence of the American military.  But we must also acknowledge that the photographic representation of Iraq skyrocketed during the war, totally outweighing and obliterating any sense of what Iraq was like before the occupation.  Consequently, Iraq has fallen into the category of a country that can’t function without American intervention as well as a place of daily, commonplace atrocity.  The analytical lenses of Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, her amending essay on torture, and Judith Butler’s counter-argumentative analysis all enable a critique of the function of imagery in thematizing American superiority, as well as its inextricable fascination of dominance and how these aspects reflexively alter fundamental cultural norms.

In this popular turn toward visual documentation we are faced with the paradoxical conundrum of the camera: is it merely a passive, unobtrusive observer or does it engender the scene entirely?  As Sontag echoes in our minds – a grin is a grin for the camera; the very act of taking a photo demands action from the subject.  The subject poses, resulting in a sense of artificiality in something that is taken to be a representation of reality.  Sontag addresses the issue of co-spectatorship as she describes General Loan executing a Vietcong suspect in the streets – for the camera.  Moments like these beg the question as to whether this would have happened at all if not for the journalists present.  As the action was carried out for the purpose of being exposed, we see how the camera has a less benign role in recording history: “It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude” (Sontag 46).  As viewers, we have a responsibility to critique not only the content of the photograph, but what is being omitted by the frame itself.  We can no longer assume that any photo is entirely candid, and consequently the framing of a photo comes under purview.  For example, the attached photograph from Ashley Gilbertson’s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot project draws attention to many of these problems.  First, we ask what we can infer without a caption.  In this case, Sontag would suggest that we see relatively little – too little to form a semantic understanding of the event.  We know that a person has been injured, detained, and treated.  The shadow of the soldier holding a weapon suggests that they are not allies.  We must also assume that the soldier (the actor with authority) is allowing this photograph to be taken.  Additionally, we subjectively apply our distance from such a scene: it is highly unlikely that we would see a bleeding man on a street (the street also notably alien to us) being guarded by a soldier.  While not a particularly graphic or dire image, we decide that things are under control and Gilbertson can take a photo freely now that the action has passed.  But are the subjects not posing for his camera?  The detainee’s face is shrouded by clothing – why?  Does this protect his identity or does it prevent the viewer from seeing any emotion in his face?  To some degree, the photograph is staged, forced, posed, composed – the photographer intended to juxtapose the shadow of a soldier over the beaten enemy.  Through this illustration, we can confirm that the presence of the camera plays a much larger role in affecting our interpretation than we are initially ready to accept.  It is through this constant critique of framing that we create an addendum to each photograph, hopefully creating a more complete sense of what is real.

As this bare bone analysis exposes the frame to the viewer, now we can discuss underlying cultural norms in the context of war: namely, how the proliferation of these types of photos either dismantles or sustains the aforementioned fantasy of American superiority.  On one hand, photos such as the ones from the Abu Ghraib scandal have such an alarming effect that we can’t help but feel some affective response, usually described as disgust.  The question Butler presents to us is whether we feel disgust because people are being forced into submission/humiliation, or are we disgusted by these apparently homosexual acts (961).  In the case of the former we are outraged with those who forced the acts for the camera (and felt justified in doing so).  The latter case of disgust, however, is much more harrowing.  The fact that there remains this dissembled link between torture and sexuality presents us with more questions than explanations about our own cultural norms.  Butler goes on to suggest that we have the latent homophobia in the military is seen as a way to dehumanize: “…violence in the name of civilization reveals its own barbarism, even as it `justifies' its own violence by presuming the barbaric subhumanity of the other against whom violence is waged” (Butler 964).  In critique of these photos are we able to witness and challenge the double standards and fallacies – how treatment of the other is a reflection of how institutions devalue not only sexuality, but other races and religions as well.

While the previous example of photography exposes the concealed xenophobia of Americans by making prisoners into a trophy of sorts, we see another aspect of American superiority come to the surface in embedded photography.  In comparing the Abu Ghraib photos to the attached photo by Ashley Gilbertson, we can draw a contrast between the two sources: Harman didn’t intend for the public to see the photos of torture, yet Gilbertson’s photos are permissible, possibly encouraged.  I intentionally selected this photo to illustrate what is absent: shock and awe.  We are not particularly shocked by this photo which may indicate something about how we need the affective response to take a stance on the war.  So we ask, is there anything wrong with Gilbertson’s photo?  Is there any perceivable sense of wrongdoing?  No.  And perhaps this is why we should be worried; this photograph is subtle propaganda.  As we’ve already addressed the framing of the photo, now let us read the caption that explains the situation.  We are now informed of the groups involved and what led to the capture of this man.  We are even told how the soldiers treat this man verbally.  As viewers, we share the animosity of the soldiers who were just fired upon by insurgents.  Consequently, this photo serves to reinforce the threat of others as America attempts to liberate Iraq.  Additionally, the clear juxtaposition of shadow over body depicts the triumph of the American forces.  This photo was permitted because it doesn’t oppose the war effort, rather it perpetuates the external perception that America is in control.  In this instance we are not regarding the pain of the subject (possibly because of a lack of face), but rather we are observing successful conquest.  What it doesn’t show us is the status of all of the participants who did or didn’t die, creating an incomplete picture of the reality it feigns to represent.  It fails to show us the grim reality that war is hell.

Perhaps photographs are much inert than we think they are; perhaps we lend them too much credence.  While some aspects of war are illuminated, others are dissembled.  Ultimately, all photographs are constructions, and this pervasiveness of visual culture pigeonholes us into a hyperreality of sorts – a place in which the real and the simulated are no longer discernable.  While it seems that we may have breached the forcible frame, it also seems that this deconstruction is subject to its own interpretation, or rather, our subjectivity is adulterated by more subjectivity.  If I never actually witnessed the fall of the World Trade Center, merely saw visual representations on television, did it actually happen?  I have no way of proving it, other than that I share this consensus on reality with other people.  As a result, there is no objective truth apart from human life.  People die horrific deaths every day and I couldn’t possibly imagine that without the ever-circulating images of atrocity.  I like to think that it builds character to understand the pain of others, but I’ve become overwhelmed with the futile notion that war and suffering are inevitable – and they are cast upon other parts of the world.

“America's ‘holiday from history’ was a fake: America's peace was bought by the catastrophes going on elsewhere.” - Slavoj Žižek, 2001

Marines from Bravo company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment detain an insurgent after they shot him and his two comrades in the neighborhood nicknamed "Queens" during the battle for Falluja, Iraq on November 13, 2004. The insurgent claimed to be a student. The marines responded, "Yeah, right, University of Jihad, motherfucker." (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War, Ashley Gilbertson 2010)