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Summer Seminar on Picturing Reform

Picturing Reform:

How Images Transformed America, 1830-1880

June 19-24, 2011

Worcester, Massachusetts

The Center for Historic American Visual Culture is sponsoring a Summer Seminar that will will focus on the history of print production in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; interpreting portrait paintings, prints, and photographs; “reading” illustrations in popular journals; and related topics.  Participants will also have access to the varied collections of visual materials of the American Antiquarian Society to pursue their own interests.

The seminar will be led by Louis P. Masur, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Institutions and Values at Trinity College, along with other faculty.  The cost of the seminar will be $750 with some financial aid available for graduate students.  Housing will be at a hotel within walking distance; the room rate is about $100 per night plus taxes. Participants can share rooms at a considerable savings.

The deadline for applications to the seminar is March 18, 2011.

Additional information is here.

Detail from Currier & Ives’ The Republican Party Going to the Right House (1860).

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Lighting a Fire in Egypt

There have been so many photographs of the democratic protests in Egypt than one can’t help but look for something unusual.

This image is a remarkable exception to the parade of images: it contains no demonstrators, no police, no political slogans, no action.  We don’t see crowds or tanks or flags or blood or burned out buildings.  So what is being shown?

Perhaps irony.  I thought about making the caption “Things Go Better with Coke.”  Some political commentators are quick to contrast citizenship with consumerism, and so this image of pop bottles being “repurposed” as Molotov cocktails can seem doubly misplaced: the consumer product shouldn’t become the vehicle for political action, and the act of making these bottles into weapons degrades politics by turning it to violence.  It seems that Coke can’t win as a public good: no matter how much it might be the people’s drink throughout the world, it either distracts or destroys.

But that’s too clever.  Whatever irony is there–and some is there–the mood of the image is something else.  Organized trash is still trash, and that’s the best in the scene.  Broken and crumpled plastic are so much flotsam in this sea of stone, and the dingy case holding the grungy bottles is hardly a triumph of civilization.  True, someone carefully prepared each of the weapons, but now they sit there as if forgotten like some old thing left at the beach at the end of the season.  The scene seems forlorn, as if they called for a revolution and nobody came.

But, of course, the people did come.

Now we’re back to a more conventional image, and a beauty at that.  This view of Tahrir Square in the evening, filled with crowds and lights, brings back so much of what was missing before: the city framing the demonstration reminds us of its purpose of political reform on behalf of the general welfare, something that is being articulated by the banners and everything else flowing into the square.  The intensity of the scene is communicated both by the sheer density of the crowd and by the lights burning brightly.  The symbolism is obvious but no less meaningful for that: a democratic Egypt is awakening, blazing forth here and there and here again amidst the darkness produced by decades of authoritarian rule.

So it is that we are tempted to allow the second image to displace the second.  How much nicer it is to be lifted up emotionally rather than pushed into sarcasm or discouragement.  The pictures are not merely opposites, however.  Light is an effect of fire, and electric lights are the descendants of fire, and Molotov cocktails are weapons of fire.  More to the point, one reason the demonstrators can fill the square on Day 15 of the protests–one reason they can still be there, well-organized against the night–is that not too long ago some of them were making and throwing Molotov cocktails.  Despite all the froth in press coverage about Facebook and the Internet, this revolution has been a bloody battle.

We all should be grateful that it may be developing into a more peaceful and more recognizably political process.  But amidst the calls for “calm” and “patience,” we should not forget that democracy at times has to resort to violence.   Those who start there should be trusted even less than those who call for civility when it protects the corrupt, but there are other alternatives.  I don’t know whether the bottle bombs shown above were ever used, or even if they were used by those opposing Mubarak or those supporting him.  In Egypt as elsewhere, most of the violence will have been directed against the protesters by reactionary forces who usually are well-armed.  The fact remains, however, that more than one democracy has of necessity been born in violent confrontation.   The lights in the square this week may have been started by those who last week were willing to fight fire with fire.

Photographs by Ed Ou/New York Times and Hannibal Hanschke/DPA/ZUMAPRESS.com.

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Cast in the Shadows of War

The battle between pro- and anti-democratic forces in Cairo has directed attention away from the fact that the U.S. continues to have nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the longest war in our nation’s history.  The cost of the war to the U.S. is approximately $119 billion dollars annually, a small enough number in comparison to our $3 trillion dollar budget perhaps, but somewhat ironic in comparison to the GDP of Afghanistan which is approximately $14 billion dollars.  And let’s not forget the 499 Americans killed in action in 2010, as well as the thousands of civilian casualties that seem to increase with each year of our military presence.

President Obama has promised that we will begin to bring troops home in July 2011, which implies a winding down of the occupation.  But there is plenty of evidence to indicate that we will remain in the shadows for a long time to come.  So, for example, neo-cons like Senator Lyndsey Graham have been calling for U.S. military bases in Afghanistan “into perpetuity,” while recent reports from the Pentagon suggest that troop reductions this summer will come from staff positions and support personnel but, “there won’t be any combat forces cut.”  One might say that all of this leaves the American public “in the dark.”

The above photograph is of a patrol of U.S. Marines in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province but it might as well be an allegory for American presence in Afghanistan.  There is no telling if the sun is rising or setting, whether the day is beginning or ending, and so too it would seem with the U.S. occupation. Deep shadows shroud the entire scene in an eerie darkness, offset only by a distant light that seems well beyond the grasp of the forward most soldier.  Indeed, the prominent linear perspective of the line of soldiers receding to the horizon gestures towards an infinity (or is it perpetuity?) that extends—as if an optical illusion—every time we appear to get close to it.  And more, notice too how those shadows literally absorb the soldier’s silhouetted bodies, suggesting that they are inexorably fused with (or is it mired in?) the landscape. The rewould seem to be no exit from this situation

The silhouetted bodies seem to operate in a second register as well, for it is impossible to identify the soldiers in the scene as anything but soldiers.  The soldier in the close foreground is indistinct from those fading into the infinite distance, as well no doubt as those who follow behind him.  Each is like the next, and the only thing that really stands out are the weapons they are carrying.  The irony here is pronounced by the caption that quotes the platoon leader who says “We’ve definitely had a lot of progress because we do so many patrols, we get out, we put our faces out there.”  It may be that success requires winning over “hearts and minds,” but for a country that has known almost constant war and occupation for decades, if not centuries, there is little doubt that those faces are anything more than markers of an alienating otherness, metaphorically shrouded in darkness if not literally so.

There is a third register in which the image works as well.  If you look closely you will notice that the soldier in the immediate foreground appears to be turning backwards and looking in the direction of the camera.  His face is obscured by the darkness, of course, but it is not impossible to imagine that he is making eye contact with the viewer who is equally positioned in the darkness that seems to extend beyond the bottom front of the image.  That eye contact would imply a demand of recognition.  It is hard to say what that particular recognition might be, but it is no less hard to imagine that it would imply a measure of complicity from which it will be very  hard to extricate ourselves.

In short, the photograph seems to be a reminder that the current war in Afghanistan casts deep shadows that obscure what we are doing there and make it very hard to imagine that we will ever get out without a marked and unmistakable effort of will.  Whether the current administration is caught in the shadows or is helping to cast them is not yet clear.

Photo Credit: Dmitry Kostyukov/AFP/Getty Images

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Sight Gag: The World Turned Upside Down

Hell_Hath_Frozen

Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look.

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Visions of the Future in the Chicago Blizzard

Disasters often provoke “finger pointing,” fault-finding, recriminations, and other accusations of failed responsibility.  As well they should.  Those who complain about “politicizing a disaster” usually have something to hide, and spirited public discussion of possible causes is essential for better preparation and improved response.  Even so, preoccupation with what did or did not happen before and during the event can lead to a missed opportunity.  Disaster photographs can contain hints of how the present contains within it alternate futures: suggestions, that is, of how present tendencies could lead to catastrophic conditions.  Those outcomes are not caused by the disaster, but they can be exposed as the smooth surfaces of a civilization are twisted into wreckage.

This photo from Tuesday’s blizzard is a lovely example of what I have in mind.   The crumpled SUV is positioned in front of Chicago’s magnificent skyline, as if the vehicle were a harbinger of things to come.  The wrecked car is one small example of the civilization symbolized by the tall buildings: all are miracles of metal and glass created by the industrial technologies now exposed to the elements once the car’s skin has been sheared away.  Of course, we are aware of the difference in scale and realize that the car can be towed away without loss to the urban core, and yet: could the city be more vulnerable that it had seemed?  Could the car and the city share not only a common environment but similar fates, different only in the time it takes for the entire society to collide with an increasingly harsh environment?

The more I looked, the more I realized how other photos were making similar suggestions.  This image of a long line of abandoned vehicles on Lake Shore Drive could be right out of a science fiction movie.  Somewhere between Victorian ideas of “heat death” and a dystopian future of abandoned cities, this image once again positions the disabled vehicles on a line toward the still illuminated buildings in the background.  Nature is clearly winning, however, and it is easy to imagine the feeble street lamps winking out and the climactic pall becoming ever more deadly, smothering everything at last.

The movie can’t dwell on panoramic shots, however.  We have to move in closer to get the real feel of decline and death.  This image of snow drifted into a bus does that very well.  We can imagine people once filing in, sitting, standing, and jostling as the driver navigated through traffic, and yet we can see only cold, inert abandonment.  Returning to nature, but not for organic regeneration, this is a scene of icy metal, useless equipment, brittle decay.  The door stands open, but no one wandering through would stay.  The snow is like desert sand, and this place has become a ruin.

Life would continue somehow, of course, but Beware the Prong People.  This image of a rescuer on a snowmobile will have brought relief to those trapped in the blizzard, but it can double as an image of a predatory nomads.  Morlocks on ice, Mad Max in the snow, whatever the allusion, the yellowish miasma of snow, fog, glare, and swirling winds suggests a hideous world where cyborg killers can prey on those already weakened by the unending storm.

Surely, however, it can’t get that bad.

If Blade Runner had been shot in Chicago in the winter, it could have looked like this.  But don’t feel too sorry for her.  She’s got her goggles and her Bud Light, and one person’s blizzard is another’s party. This could be a study in individual improvisation or in gradual cultural adaptation to a steadily deteriorating climate, but it doesn’t have to be so bad.  Her stylish insouciance in the face of the storm is charming, and one is reminded that the young often don’t know enough to cynical, which benefits us all.

A blizzard in Chicago is not a catastrophe, nor is it a disaster, not on the usual scale of things, anyway.  It is a disruption that can have unfortunate consequence in the individual case, but generally people deal with it and often are better for it.  Even so, the imagery is part of a larger archive of public art, and the artistic insinuations may be worth considering.  It’s not often that we take the time to consider just how the present may already contain the seeds of futures we’d rather not see.

The point, howover, is not to become either morose or dismissive.  The lesson once again lies in the last photo: The future might not be worse or better than the present, but simply different.  That might be the most disturbing thought of all.

First photograph by Henry C. Webster, Chicago.  Additional photographs by  E. Jason Wambsgans (2 & 3) and Brian Cassella (4 &5) for the Chicago Tribune.

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Arms and Empire: US Weapons and Egyptian “Stability”

One of the interesting facets of photographs is how they can contain information that often goes unnoticed.  The same is true of the discourses of empire.  For those living at the center of the system, the operation and effects of the imperial state might as well be invisible, for they have been neutralized by long periods of habituation and denial.  Thus, one thinks nothing when presidents speak of the need for “stability” in a region, not questioning how that is code for “continued support of authoritarian rule.” Or one is genuinely puzzled why demonstrators in a small country far away would burn an American flag–what have we ever done to them?  Even when caught up in the euphoria and instinctive identification with a democratic revolution, it is easy to overlook the evidence that at the end of the day geopolitical relationships may prove to be, well, stable.

This is one of many photographs from Egypt’s civic uprising that features army tanks surrounded by the demonstrators who could conceivably have been or still become victims of a military assault.  As John Lucaites pointed out on Monday, the images draw on a rich iconography of political upheaval while capturing key elements that are obviously important yet still not fully understood in this particular event.  The ongoing, often micro-political negotiation between the people and the army seems to be crucial to whether the demonstrations succeed or are betrayed and crushed.  That alone would seem to be reason enough for the photograph.

Even so, you might wonder why no one bothers to talk about the tanks themselves.  They are symbols, sure, but they also are real tanks having specific designs and manufacturers.  And that’s where some of the “missing” information is actually there to be seen.  The tanks in the long line are versions of the M1 Abrams.  I’m not positive about the tank on the left, but I’m fairly sure it’s an M60 Patton.   Want to guess where they are produced?

Tanks are not cheap, of course, but Egypt has the benefit of $1.3 billion in US military aid every year.  Although President Obama’s recent statements on behalf of regime change are a good thing, don’t think they is going to change the client status of the Egyptian state or the role of the Egyptian army, its officer corp properly schooled by the US, in maintaining that relationship.  As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others have already said, the military aid is not going to change.

And so a photograph of a democratic moment is also a photograph of an imperial relationship.  From there, its a small step to answering the question of “why they hate us.”

Unlike the army, the Egyptian police have not been playing nice.  Gassing, beating, shooting, spying on, and probably torturing the demonstrators, they have revealed in a few days what they have been doing continuously for many years.  The basic reason that many people hate the US is that we maintain dictators who run police states.  We support those autocrats by providing the enormous advantages in money, weapons, information, and just about anything else they need to suppress their own people. And the people notice.

So it is that we have the photograph above: If you look at the figure on the right, you might see the incarnation of a Fox News nightmare: the terrorist, black on brown, his face covered in defiance, his eyes sharply focused in hate.  (Or you can see a young man wearing a scarf to protect himself against tear gas and perhaps the secret police.)  But look at the tear gas canister on the left.  It will have been fired by the police into the crowd; its effects range from painful to terrifying to debilitating.  And look at the bottom of the can: “Made in USA.”

Photographs by Miguel Medina/AFP-Getty Images and Yannis Behrakis/Reuters.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.

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