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The Evolution of Violence in the 21st Century

Barbara Ehrenreich brings her book Blood Rites to a brilliant close by advancing the idea that war is a meme: a self-replicating pattern of behavior. She highlights Richard Dawkins’ observation that a meme can propagate as it does “‘simply because it is advantageous to itself.'” Her conclusion follows: “If war is a ‘living’ thing, it is a kind of creature that, by its very nature, devours us. To look at war, carefully and long enough, is to see the face of the predator over which we thought we had triumphed long ago.”

Let’s follow Ehrenreich’s injunction to look at war carefully, and do so while aware of another implication of her thesis. If war is a dynamic entity committed to its own survival, then it will adapt to elude environmental changes. Peace, prosperity, education, globalization, and similar threats need to be outflanked or infiltrated. One possible adaptation is to shift “backwards” from organized war between nation states to more primitive forms of violence. Two examples follow.

You are looking at a grown man clubbing a boy. The man is strong and practiced: holding the boy with one hand as he swings the club with full force. He keeps his eye on the target as he bring his weight into the blow. With any luck he’ll bring the thigh bone or the wrist, perhaps both. The boy can see it coming. His face is already a mask of pain and terror as he leaps to try to avoid the blow. The predator has him firmly in his grasp, however. The boy is young and thin and hobbled by his clothes; he could not be a threat to the man or to the state. He looks like at rabbit caught in the clutches of a wolf. Another member of the pack looks on approvingly.

The Chicago Tribune Photos of the Day caption said, “In Karachi, an anti-government demonstrator was struck by a police officer. There were protests in several cities around Pakistan.” The distortion is obscene. They might as well have said, “What else are the police to do when the entire county is under attack by those who would tear down the government?” Of course, the protests were on behalf of democratic government and justice, and the boy is not a demonstrator but a kid on the street who was most likely guilty only of acting like a citizen. The caption does get one thing right: state terrorism of the sort seen here–a common but mild version of the beast–is one of the forms of war in our time.

And here’s another:

I can hardly bear to look at this photo. If the young man on the ground isn’t dead yet, he’s about to be. Again, another male throws his full strength into the act of violence. His eyes are focused directly on the target–the head that is about to be crushed. Again, a bystander looks on with interest. They are in Kenya, but they could be many places in the world today. The guy with the rock is a Luo, and he is another strand in the propagation of war. This is another old pattern that has been resurgent in the past decades: rampaging violence let loose by the collapse of political and social order into anarchy. The state may still be a player behind the scenes, but in its place there is sheer destruction, mutilation, torture, and murder as done by roving bands of rogue males.

Either way boys are being ruined. And that may be the least of it. A third form of war’s predation today is the horrific rape and mutilation of many thousands of women throughout Africa. I don’t yet have the stomach to report on that. For the moment, let it be enough to look carefully at the two photographs above. They record the news but also show something worse. As “war” becomes contained, violence spreads like an epidemic. A new century is the scene for ancient forms of violence as the beast continues to devour its human prey.

Photographs by Rizwan Tabassum and Yasuyoshi Chiba, Agence France-Presse–Getty Images. The first image also brings to mind this photograph from the American civil rights movement. That image provoked strong public criticism of the white resistance in the South. But who protests similar violence on the streets of the world today?

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A Jewel of a Planet

Many of the intellectual habits of Western culture have been subjected to devastating critique in the last few decades. This period of vital academic work has been much decried by conservative commentators, most of whom neither read nor practiced the tradition in question. There are times, however, when an antique idea may have limited application, not least as a starting point for understanding what an image can teach us. The idea that I have in mind today is that what is beautiful is also good. Those of us who look best on radio know the limitations of this claim, but it might make more sense when applied at a larger scale than individual appearance. Like this:

The photograph accompanied a New York Times story on how climate change can cause endangered ecosystems and species to migrate from the nature preserves designed for their protection. So it is that the Chandeleur Islands that you see here might go under water entirely, taking a bird habitat with them. The story spoke of the “preservation predicament,” but environmental advocacy faces a continuing rhetorical predicament as well, which is that it is difficult to provide definitive examples of systemic change. So it is that every cold snap produces sarcastic jokes about global warming, while every heat wave can be discounted as merely a local phenomenon. Nor can this photo do the job: although water is overtaking the land, that’s what you might expect of low-lying barrier strands. And isn’t it more aesthetically interesting because the water is there?

But let’s back up a bit. Forget about documentary evidence. The image is beautiful, and not just typically so. This is not what you expect to see in either landscape photography or at the seaside. Instead of nature’s wonder spreading beyond our limited horizon, here we look down from above. That god’s eye view makes what is in fact a geological landform look like an ornament. I saw not islands so much as a piece of artisan jewelry. Instead of water, recently molten metal; instead of land, delicately wrought ceramic; instead of accident, design.

The point is not that you should see it the same way. But to see the island as a thing of beauty is to grant it special status as a good thing. And it will be a good thing regardless of any calculation of utility, whether by a real estate developer or an environmental protection group. And if it is a good thing because of its beauty, then we should appreciate that this beauty comes from its inherently variable and fragile nature. Neither sea nor land nor sky, the image gives us these things in precarious equilibrium. The message is not that the earth is warming or that change is inevitable anyway, although either conclusion can be drawn. No, the photograph says something more basic: This is a beautiful planet. Admire it. Love it.

Photograph by Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press. For an earlier post on aesthetic design in nature, see The Photographic Cosmos. The beauty-is-good idea was a stock item in the Renaissance; see, for example, Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier.

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Love in the Ruins

Compassion fatigue may be one problem confronting photojournalism, but as long as photographers continue to provide images of emotional intensity and depth, the viewing public has the opportunity for greater understanding, solidarity, and response. Two photographs, one from this week and another from a month ago, provide object lessons in thinking about powerful forces shaping the globe today. The first image is from China:

The Washington Post caption said, “A couple witnesses the demolition of their house in Beijing. With soaring housing prices, some urban residents say they are being evicted to make way for new development without being compensated enough to buy new homes.” The imagetext is highly paratactic: we are to infer that this couple was evicted and inadequately compensated. It could be that they decided to move–time to downsize, perhaps–and got a good price but are shaken anyway by leaving what was a beloved home. Maybe, but I think we can assume the worst.

They look as if they are being crushed by the great weight of uncontrolled loss. Each is distraught, so much so that rather than “witness” the demolition, they can’t bear to look. She cleaves to him as if she would collapse otherwise; though supporting her, he looks as if something is giving way inside. Though joined to each other, each seems isolated by their common desolation. Their winter coats heighten the sense of vulnerability: she is bundled up but still hugging him; his sweater is exposed, perhaps because he is wearing two coats. They seem to be wearing all they have, already succumbing to homelessness.

The second image also was taken during a time of dislocation.

The New York Times caption said, “A Luo mother and daughter fleeing the fighting in Nakuru waited to be evacuated by the Kenyan Red Cross on Saturday.” They are lucky, as they have not yet been mutilated, raped, or killed, and the Red Cross trucks that are there for them may arrive too late for others. But they are facing deportation and perhaps the permanent loss of their home; even if they return, their sense of security may be gone forever.

An image of backs, not faces, and a long view of canvas-covered trucks might seem to have little emotional resonance. The mother and daughter are deeply evocative, however. The mother is not yet old, nor the girl yet an adult, but the girl’s age tells us that both are moving toward unknown and inevitable change. (If they are lucky enough to grow older, they are likely to grow apart.) But now they are walking together, beautifully so. They are linked most obviously by their clasped hands joining them at the hip, but also by the alteration of red and white in the clothes, and by their heads each turned enough to have their lines of sight intersect on the truck moving down the road ahead. They are separate people yet bound together in the mutual obligation and trust of family life. The mother has not only her daughter’s hand but also a shoulder bag and another bag in her right hand. She will keep the girl close to her and try to provide for them both. The girl carries only herself. That is plenty, as she is the future.

The first picture is at odds with the incredible increase in prosperity and living standards experienced by many in China today, and so it is easily rationalized as another example of “creative destruction.” The Nike swoosh on the man’s jacket marks that dimension of the photograph; the degree of irony is up to you. As far as many Chinese are concerned, this might be a very good gamble. The photograph bears witness to something else, however. The destruction is never creative for those being destroyed.

The second photograph goes against the grain of the news from Africa. Once again, years of slow progress are lost in days as another nation plunges into civil war and anarchy. Once again, we read of ethnic violence, marauding gangs, horrible atrocities. And yet this photograph poses the deportees as if they were looking into a vista of economic development and prosperity. They should look like the couple in the first image, yet they seem poised, interested, and ready to move forward. (Likewise, boosters for capitalism would tell the Chinese couple to buck up and look like these two.) The point here is not that one can flee for progress, but that amidst the ravages of African violence many people will remain capable of loving and caring for one another.

Both photographs have a capacity for emotional resonance that can help us better understand global change. Economic development and political violence are two of the most powerful forces at work in the world today. We need to remember that the first can harm people, and that people can survive and overcome the second. To think otherwise in each case is to render people disposable.

Photographs by Oded Bality/Associated Press and Evelyn Hockstein/New York Times.

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Joy and Grief in Kenya

World news coverage of late has been filled with images of violence in the streets. Typically these are photographs of demonstrators battling with police or rival mobs. Sometimes there are scenes of looting or beating–often of the police laying into someone–or of spectators such as children or shopkeepers looking anxiously at the still unfolding madness around them. For all that, the many images look much the same, as if there were one endless demonstration playing out continually across the world, one long-running political spectacle in the theater of the Arab/African/Asian/Latin American street.

That may be why this image is at once familiar and yet scandalous:

Instead of the usual backdrop of the demonstration along an otherwise busy city street, here we see real wreakage amidst what otherwise was already a slum. And instead of the stock characters of earnest citizens and bullying cops, or outraged citizens and cautious cops, or mob frenzy and state terror, or any other political scenario, here we see a man exulting in the sheer ecstasy of destruction. An obscene truth is being revealed: what is violence and burning and horror to some is for others an experience of raw freedom as it can be perversely but powerfully known only through violent revenge and ruin. The sound track should be the Ode to Joy.

We’re not supposed to see that truth, and many others appear once that Pandora’s box is opened. Violence persists not only because so many are denied so much by so few, but also because it remains the best shot some have at feeling powerful. Freedom comes from democracy and prosperity, but the experience of freedom can be had by destroying those that have what others lack. I could go on, but you get the point. And that’s why it also is important to look at the next photo:

The Washington Post caption says, “A woman finds the body of her brother lying by the roadside in Nairobi’s Mathare suburb.” This also is a terrible picture. We see not violence but its aftermath of death. And, as if it matters, useless, sad, lonely, ignoble death. But that doesn’t matter. A person–a brother, son, friend, and more–has been destroyed. The terrible absence of the head could be an optical illusion, but one fears the worst. The boulder, which could have killed him and seems to be his severed head, lays there as if the reality of the body alone weren’t enough to communicate the harsh brutality and finality of his murder.

This also is a photo about softness, however. Other than the hard-edged boulder, the scene features draped clothing, a woman’s torso, her companion’s kindness, the lavender umbrella, and, of course, the elegiac rain. Nature has obliged to express the appropriate tone for a scene of mourning. And she is mourning, and by standing there without touching her brother she already is giving herself over to the utter helplessness that death lays on the living. Yet by being there and bearing witness to her brother and her loss, she stands for the return of human decency.

The joy in the first photo comes from hate. Hate is something harder, deeper, less changeable, and far more dangerous than other emotions. It also has no place in politics. Hate is in fact one border of the political: You can struggle to live with others, even to dominate them, or you can hate and kill them. Likewise, hate is felt toward groups, while anger is felt toward individuals (see Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 1382a). By seeing the senseless loss created by an individual laying dead on the street, the second photo returns us to a world of persons who deserve justice or protection but not violence.

Grief may be a deeply political emotion. Even though no one can reach the depths of pain felt by the individual stricken with grief, it calls forth empathy and can move us all to cross the borders of our estrangement from one another. It was grief, not killing or victory or glory that finally brought Achilles out of his rage against the Trojans to a moment of decency. Perhaps the recognition of grief can remind us that violence is not just another means for political expression. It is how we end up dancing in Hell.

Photographs by Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images and Boniface Mwangi/Bloomberg News.

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Fred Thompson, Trouper

The papers of late have been full of pictures of the front runners in the presidential nominating races surrounded by throngs of near delirious supporters eager to touch the hem of the political celebrity who has come to their otherwise inconsequential state. (OK, I’ll retract that last remark in respect to South Carolina, which has started a war.) These photos are full of the energy of massed bodies, close encounters, and the charismatic touch. They are representative of important features of our political process, for better or worse, but they don’t tell the whole story. To get closer to that, we have to look elsewhere, like here:

You are looking at a photo from last week of Fred Thompson stepping onto a stage in Prosperity, South Carolina. The long view allows us to see the candidate as part of a scene, rather someone around whom everything else is compressed. The view also isolates each part of the scene: candidate, bunting, handler, local supporter, and wife-and-kid are each identifiable as if pieces of a grade school diorama. What is most revealing, however, is that we see both stage and backstage in a single view. What would have been The Candidate framed by the Red White and Blue becomes instead a tacky stage set–hey, don’t trip on that cord! And instead of those gathered in his name, we see instead wife-and-kid waiting in the wings, or waiting to make their entrance, but either way now bit players that make Thompson no more than the lead in the school play.

I suspect that this image is presented to remind us that Thompson’s campaign remains a non-starter. One reason I think so is because the shot above called to mind another taken last year:

Now we’re in Anderson, South Carolina. Not much has changed. Again, the key element of composition is that we are shown both stage and backstage. And as before, the difference between front and back is only a flimsy curtain and our customary inattention to political stagecraft. This photo may be a bit more grim in that we see Thompson just before he puts on his theatrical mask. And we see a bit more of the area behind the curtain–enough to really know that backstage is a cold, harsh, functional place of calculation and paying the bill.

Again, the message is that this guy is not going to win. He’s playing on far too small a stage in too small a place to what barely counts as an audience. (Pop Quiz: how old will Thompson by the time that kid on the left votes?) That’s not exactly news, however. I think the real value of these images is that they show us what every candidate experiences and endures. The big winners only get there by playing before small houses like these in the community theater of American politics. And when some of them make it, the stage gets larger, but there is always a stage.

Photographs by Jim Wilson/New York Times and Mary Ann Chastain/Associated Press.

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Conference Call: Critical Literacy in Visual Culture

Power to Empowerment: Critical Literacy in Visual Culture

Dates of conference: June 7-8, 2008

Location: Dallas, Texas

Papers are solicited for an international, transdisciplinary conference examining visual literacy as it is shaped by, shapes and integrates private and public identity and subjectivity through social institutions and forces including education, politics, ethics, technology, media, marketing, commerce, the environment and society.

The conference understands visual literacy from the perspective of individuals, communities, groups and organizations to mean the ability to successfully compose and deliver meaningful communication as well as decode and interpret visual messages. It involves perceiving visual images as components of a larger culture matrix, constituting their meaning and significance, discerning relationships between their intended and actual purposes and audiences, and acting with or upon them.

Visual literacy generates and is affected by relationships between the visual, literacy and power, including disenfranchisement. Particular themes or topics for papers may include but are not limited to the economics of visual culture, constructing the visual landscape, visual culture and affiliations and disenfranchisements, brands and users, ethnographies of visual culture, the charge of education to superintend visual literacy, visual literacy and power, visual illiteracy, visual culture and social difference, and visual cultures of everyday life.

Abstracts between 250-500 words are sought for 15-20 minute paper presentations. The deadline to receive abstracts is February 1, 2008. Notification of acceptance will be March 1, 2008.

Please send your abstract electronically as a word-document to Keith Owens, Assistant Professor, Communication Design, University of North Texas College of Visual Arts & Design, kowens@unt.edu.

Assistant Professor
Communication Design

College of Visual Arts & Design
The University of North Texas
PO Box 305100
Denton, Texas 76203

Office 940.369.7243
Mobile 214.649.3647

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Seeing Through Shadows

Every so often there will be a soft news photo that features the optical effect of a double image. It might involve a mirror or TV monitor or a photograph, among other options. Shadows are another variant of optical replication, as in this photo from the Australian Open:

Maria Sharapova is hitting a forehand. It’s not a good photo of her. At the least, most photo editors would have no interest in a long view that has her looking awkward and disconnected from her own shot much less the flow of the game. (Unless, perhaps, she was blundering to a loss, but she won the match handily.) One thinks of antique images from the 1920s, when the game had style but none of the extreme athleticism that we now take for granted.

But it’s not a picture about her, directly. The interest is created entirely by the shadow. The optical doubling of Sharapova lies along the two primary axes of the composition: she defines the vertical plane, while her shadow lies along the horizontal. Sharapova is the familiar presence visually, but the shadow is reinforced by the horizontal white line crossing the field of blue along the top of the photograph. The ball lies like a point in a graph, the intersection of X and Y coordinates. Thus, the figural composition acquires a hue of abstraction. This is not a photograph of a person, but of something else.

What else? The shadow knows. We can look there for the form of a thing and so for what we might miss when distracted by all the details of ordinary perception oriented toward social interaction. Were we looking only at Sharapova swinging her racket, we should see an individual tennis player, someone with a specific face, look, game. When we look at the shadow, however, the distortion created by the angle of the light and twist of her body brings something more elemental to the surface of the court. There we see a body transformed by the act of hitting the ball. The shadow outline of her legs is much like her legs, but as she torques through the shot her torso appears to be compressed into one continuous limb that grows out of her pelvis and arcs into forearm, hand, and racket. Her head has disappeared into upper body which has morphed to maximize the force traveling into the prosthetic extension of the hand. What started out human ends up a hitting machine.

Thus, the optical double reveals a more abstract dimension of the act of hitting a tennis ball, and of the game of tennis as it is played on the world stage. Tennis is promoted by featuring individual players as if they were fashion models or rock stars. To get there, however, the players need a lot more than flair. They can only succeed by subjecting themselves to grueling training that makes them extremely efficient competitors, and little else.

Shadows can reveal the other self. Like the portrait of Dorian Gray, the double might reveal one’s sins, but that might be more melodramatic than is needed much of the time. A shadow also could lend itself to recollection or prophecy or other opportunities for reflection. I’ll close with another image, one also taken because of the shadow in the frame.

This image of an American soldier in Iraq is a study in opposites. The soldier, who should be the focal subject, is partially outside the frame and has his back to us. His shadow, which should be merely an afterimage, is in the right center of the picture and facing forward. Indeed, the shadow figure seems almost exposed, turned toward us in a way that makes him seem vulnerable, open to injury as the stalwart soldier shielded by his backpack is not. That vulnerability is accentuated by the distortion, which makes him appear slouched, even sunken-chested. And this shadow is not hard dark but rather a soft, yellowish color like the wall behind it. This double is wraith-like, a ghostly presence with streamers and gun drooping down like Marley’s chains, though ethereal. And also, like the photograph above, somehow less than human: in this case, arachnoid–like a spider or scorpion lying in wait in the sun.

Somewhere between Sad Sack and the war dead while looking like a primitive predator, this shadow could be the image of the elemental soldier. That is, the soldier seen without the martial virtues evident in the actual figure on the left. The soldier who, for all his terrible power, will not project power for long, whose presence will evaporate in time even if he is not killed first. The soldier who will have to be replaced by another much like him.

Photographs by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images (1/14/08) and Alexander Nemenov/AFP (9/29/07).

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Eventide in Iraq

No one is moving, nothing is happening, and the scene is unexceptional, yet I find this photograph strangely poignant.

There is something serene here, yet not with the promise of safety. Although the men are sitting quietly, almost as if posed for portraits, they remain soldiers in full combat gear with weapons drawn. But somehow they are, for a moment, seemingly at peace, just sitting and content with that. They may be waiting for something to do, yet the coming of evening bathes the scene in quietude. They could be at Vespers.

The emotional resonance may be very simple: men sit calmly in the evening, self-contained, not asking for anything as the dark moves in. But other soldiers are hovering above them, and those sitting are in front of a house that belongs to others. So the emotional tone becomes complicated. The scene contains rural domesticity and military force, modern electrical lines and ancient designs in the brickwork, warm colors and deep isolation. The men seem at peace, but they each sit alone within a very small place that exists only for a moment, only until the war starts up again.

The photo accompanied a New York Times report on 9 U.S. deaths from a bomb that went off while the soldiers were searching a house. The photo’s caption said, “American soldiers briefly occupied a house in Diyala Province on Wednesday as American forces hunted for insurgents and bombs.” That’s the same province where the 9 were killed. These troops might be staying “briefly,” but not so little that they haven’t posted guards and a machine gun on the roof. This clearly is dangerous duty: they could be attacked or they could be sitting above a bomb about to be detonated. In that context, just to sit quietly might be a moment of grace.

Photograph by Jehad Nga/New York Times.

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The Photographic Cosmos

January 10, 2008December 3, 2013
Hariman
fashion/fiction
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The English word “cosmos” is defined by Websters/Random House as “the world or universe regarded as an orderly, harmonious system.” The word derives directly from the Greek kosmos, which could mean the world or universe, and also an ornament and the mode or fashion of a thing. The connection between the, well, macrocosmic dimensions of the universe and correspondingly microcosmic scale of an ornament–think of an minutely detailed earring–came in the Greek mind from a shared sense of order. That connection is lost in English usage, where “cosmic” and “universal” go in one direction and “ornamental” and “fashionable” in quite another. At times, however, it is still there to be seen. Let’s start with this image:

This is a photograph of a carefully prepared martini. The image first appeared in a Chicago Tribune Magazine photo-essay on “cool cocktails” and ended up as one of many images in an end-of-the-year review. This is a better fate than what awaits most photographs of food or drink, and for good reason. This image is a stunning example of modernist design at its best. It also is optically interesting, not least because of how the light in the glass, whether of the cocktail or camera or both, makes an X pattern in the conic section, and of how the colors in the drink are repeated as a spectrum on the perimeter. These designs suggest another structure underlying the aesthetic design of the cocktail, the natural ordering of the physical universe. Against such cosmic extension, the drink is but an ornament yet something differing from the universe only in scale, not in aesthetic significance.

Whatever their worth, I was brought to these thoughts not by the photograph itself but because it inadvertently made me think of another:

This is the now famous Photo 51 taken by Rosalind Franklin in Kings College London in 1952. You are looking at an X-ray diffraction image of DNA. And not just any image X-ray diffraction image of DNA, but the one that provided the key missing piece of information for Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule. (Two of the three named above received the Nobel Prize for this discovery; want to guess which one was left out?) It’s a stretch to see the structure of life in a photograph of a martini; indeed, a physicist might point out that a more parsimonious explanation is available. But I love the aesthetic correspondence. Each can be ornament and each cosmos to the other. One can see structure within design, or design within structure. (And this without any religious implications, by the way.)

Universe or ornament, fashion or nature. You don’t have to be Greek to see that they can be the same. It does help to be open to allegory, however, and to chiasmus and, perhaps, to quote Wallace Stevens, to the Motive for Metaphor and “the vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.”

Photographs by Bill Hogan/Chicago Tribune (February 2, 2007); Rosalind Franklin, Kings College London (1952).

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Seeing We the People in New Hampshire

There will be a lot of photos in the papers today following the New Hampshire Primary. These will include professional photojournalism as well as the Polling Place Photo Project and other examples of vernacular photography. I’m going to add one from the recent past:

This is from the 2004 New Hampshire primary. I haven’t seen it reproduced anywhere.

I love this photograph, which could be labeled Poll Dancers. There is a lot going on, including the expressions of the poll workers, the color and texture of the setting–look at that beautiful table–and the formal relationships in the visual composition of the scene. The basic design is what was called a chiasmus in classical rhetoric. The formal pattern for chiasmus in a verbal text is ABBA: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” In a visual image, the equivalent figure would be a crossing pattern that carries a change in meaning or joins opposing concepts. In this photograph, this pattern is cued by the legs of the two poll workers: each are crossed, front foot toward the other. This unconsciousness entrainment is mimed by their arms and turned heads, and by the spontaneous entrainment of the two voters stepping out of the booths. The symmetrical alternation by gender links the two pairings, who together form a large X if you draw lines from head to toe, male to male and female to female. Each of the two couples has nearly identical expressions on their faces, and the seriousness of the citizens who are voters is complemented by the good vibe of the citizens who are tending the polling place.

The smiles cue emotional response to the rest of the scene, even though it is obvious that those smiling could not be reacting to those behind them. Likewise, it doesn’t matter that the viewer will never know the joke being shared by the two volunteers. Their smiles, along with the informal clothing of all four figures and the fact that all are acting as if no one is watching, make the scene a celebration of the beautiful egalitarianism of democratic elections. This more complex sentiment is shaped by the red, white, and blue cloth draping the voting booths. Wrapped in the national colors, the voters’ accidental choreography symbolizes that elections can aggregate private decisions by strangers to produce social harmony. The woman on the left and the man on the right are different individuals, but they unconsciously move in unison on election day.

Note also that the photograph has no news value. We know that thousands voted, that many voting stations and voters look very much like these, and so forth. Instead, the photograph crafts an emotionally rich performance of democratic life. The vernacular life of small town democracy temporarily is given national significance and emotional resonance; likewise, the social form of citizenship, which often is disembodied, standardized, and abstract, becomes more embodied, familiar, and particular. Aesthetic judgments have to be specific, particular judgments, just like voting, and so there is yet another continuity offered: the act of voting, which only a few were able to do yesterday, is extended to all who are able to view the photograph. One act of citizenship becomes multiplied many times by public spectatorship.

The cynic could point out the virtual citizenship is a long way from political power, and for that voting and viewing often are about equally useless. My attachment to the photograph is not nostalgic, as I see it as a still present reality, but it certainly is sentimental and idealistic. Just like voting.

Photograph from the New York Times.

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