NO CAPTION NEEDED – Page 141 – PHOTOJOURNALISM, PUBLIC CULTURE, AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

Unveiling the Human

This is one of those images that leaves me speechless:

It is so elemental, so purely visual, that language seems completely unnecessary. We see a woman seeing, with almost every other thing about her obliterated to blackness. We see only her eyes, the “window of the soul,” and that through a slit, as if she were looking out of a crack in a prison wall. She looks out intently, as if seeing through that narrow aperture were as necessary as breathing.

Many would say that she is in a prison: encased in the burqa and the comprehensive confinement of women that it represents. She might agree with that account of her life, or she could complicate it. For example, we can observe that she also is wearing a green scarf that matches her eyes: a world of culture, fashion, personal care, and relationships with other women and her family all follow from that little fact. More to the point of the day the photo was taken, the caption reported that she was protesting against the imprisonment of 9200 Palestinian prisoners. They, she might say, are the people you should care about if you oppose unjust imprisonment.

At that point at lot of people might start talking, and so speechlessness is not the problem. But there was another reason I was stunned by the image. This photograph evokes a standard narrative of Western personhood and yet places it at the edge of intelligibility. The eyes represent the face which represents the essential individual, and all of this is heightened by contrast with the confinement and uniformity of the burqa. Likewise, the eyes looking out symbolize the belief that each person yearns to escape restriction to realize the freedom that is the necessary condition for full realization of the self.

And yet at the same time the image makes this interpretation acutely vulnerable, even strange. If humanism is evoked, it also is compressed, reduced, taken down to the most minimal condition of communication: a look, without context, through a tear in a shroud. James Elkins remarks in The Object Stares Back that faces are difficult to understand or describe because “they are the very beginning of our understanding of unity and coherence” (195). This image reveals the unity, coherence, and fundamental integrity of the human person, and yet it also takes us back to a terrible moment of origin–or the verge of extinction. This may be the closest we can get to seeing a person, and she is all but incomprehensible for that.

But you may not have seen that at all. In fact, I didn’t write about this photo when I first saw it; though stopped in my tracks, I also suspected that it was unduly manipulative. (I was able to write about it only when I came across it again by accident yesterday.) There are many uses for a photograph, and images of the burqa are proliferating in the mainstream media. The easy point to make is that they are fodder in a propaganda war in a supposed clash of civilizations. I think more is going on, not least the visualization of interesting problems within liberalism. One wonders how much the idea of the person depends on such images, perhaps because it is weakening or shifting on some other, unidentified dimension. We also might ask whether this photograph is one example of making a fetish of individuality at the expense of collective action on behalf of peace.

The good news is that Orientalist erotic fantasies, although not completely absent, are not being pushed here. They may even be displaced by the belief that the veil hides essentially modern women waiting to be released from oppression. That won’t be entirely accurate, but it may be largely true, and history shows that one could do much worse.

I’ve gone from being speechless to rambling. There are other connections to make, including the famous image of the Afghan girl on a National Geographic cover. In any case, I think the value of the photograph above is not how it reveals anything about a particular woman or women behind the veil, but how it challenges those looking in.

NB: This is another in a series of posts on the relationship between the veil and Western norms of visibility, publicity, and political identity. They are filed under The Visual Public Sphere.

Photograph by Hatem Moussa for the Associated Press (Washington Post, Day in Photos, August 13, 2007).

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Filling “the Gap” in a Field of Dreams

Note: This is the second of a two-part post on the “shadow army” of mercenary forces in Iraq. To see the first part, “Seeing the Enemy” go to BagnewsNotes.

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“Build it and they will come.” Those are the words that Erik [the] Prince of Blackwater used in a recent interview with the Washington Post, referring to his 7,000 acres, “Blackwater Lodge and Training Center,” as a “Field of Dreams.” Field of Dreams, of course, is an endearing but not so subtle, surrealistic parable for the American dream cast in the mythic registers of Christian redemption and our national fascination with baseball. When Prince quotes from the movie he invites consideration of the darker side of the national mythos, rooted in the imperialistic pretensions of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny. His firm, Blackwater, Worldwide, formerly Blackwater, USA—and the change of name is notable in an age of empire and globalization—is a “private contractor” with multi-billion dollar government contracts to train U.S. military and paramilitary personnel and to provide independent security forces who serve, in Prince’s words, as “gap fillers” with the “skills the U.S. government needs to operate domestically and abroad.”

“Gap fillers” is a euphemism for “private armies” or “mercenaries,” terms that Prince steadfastly rejects. But there can be little question as to what Blackwater imagines its continuing “mission” to be, as indicated in the poster titled “The MISSION Continues,” available for purchase at the Blackwater Proshop for $15.00 (along with a catalog of “Apparel,” [Tactical] “Accessories,” and “Gifts” for “that special person in your life”). Shot from a low angle that accentuates their presence, the “gap fillers” are decked out in generic military gear, accompanied by a German Shepherd (vaguely reminiscent of the dog in the infamous torture photographs from Abu Ghraib), and supported by an array of high-tech weaponry and equipment, including helicopters, jets, tanks, and armored vehicles. The Blackwater brand in the upper right hand corner makes it clear who the agents represent. And at the bottom the poster announces, “Coming Soon – Global Stability.” The claim is as arrogant as it is wrong.

But there is a bigger point to be made, which has less to do with Blackwater per se than with the fantasy world within which the ad/announcement operates and the way in which it contributes to the larger normalization of a war culture. Blackwater casts itself and the problems of global instability within the fictional world of hyper-masculine, shoot ‘em up action movies in which the “hero” has access to an endless supply of high tech weaponry that he uses with impunity to destroy terrorists, aliens, and other barbarians—in addition to anything else that happens to get in his way—by day and then returns to his home and family by night, leaving a smoldering world in his wake. The only thing missing in this “mock” movie poster is the star power of a Bruce Willis or Keifer Sutherland.

And there is more, for the appeal here is not just to an action narrative driven by an adolescent attraction to pyrotechnics, but to a visual aesthetic of color, angle of view, background and gesture that draws directly from the lucrative, fantasy world of single-shooter video games such as Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.

The visual analogy is both uncanny and frightening. But it should not surprise us. For we have seen this combination of militaristic fantasy and the realism of war over and again in recent times, whether it is with announcements of missions accomplished, government officials shooting weapons in high tech military simulators, or private citizens playing soldier at paintball parks. Erik Prince deserves our derision, there is no doubt about that, but what should really draw our attention is an increasingly normative culture of war that fuels and enables a world in which entities like Blackwater can prosper as they give new meaning to phrases like “Playground of Destruction,” or in which the fantasy that “global stability” can be accomplished by “gap fillers” is anything more than a surrealistic “field of dreams.” And that is something we all share a responsibility for.

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Rudy's Kids

Maybe I’ve been distracted or perhaps it’s been slim pickings on the photojournalism beat lately. Time to bottom feed, as with yesterday’s New York Times story about Rudy G. on the campaign trail. The front page report included this photo:

If nothing else, this is a variant on Kids “R” Props, with the American Worker as the stand-in. I can only hope that he picked Rudy’s pocket, but it’s not likely.

What interests me is how the photograph displays some of the basic roles of the American political campaign in miniature. I’m having to guess about the people in the scene, but I do know the characters they appear to be playing. First, of course, is The Candidate. Usually the center of the picture, here he shares it with The Voter (a.k.a. The Common Man), who would not be there otherwise. White shirt and tie on the left, t-shirt and ball cap on the right: can you guess which is which? Their happy hug does double duty as it symbolizes both Rudy’s wish that the electorate will cleave to him, and the collective myth that in America elites and masses work side-by-side to form one body politic.

Usually we only notice the major roles. I like this photo because it also shows the other players on the stage. The two suits on the right look like Handlers; I’d guess that the one on the far right is Campaign Staff and the guy muscling in is Security. The suit in the left rear probably is the Local Politico. The woman on the left and the tall guy in the blue shirt, who each are wearing the same strap for their ID tag, could be Local Staffers. The Press is left rear, and in the deep background we see the Public milling about, well out of the picture but craning to get a peek or a snapshot.

Rudy is posing, probably for another camera. He will meet a lot of people, shake a lot of hands, and smile and smile and smile. Then he’ll do it again and again and again. Most people have no idea how physically and psychologically demanding campaigns have become. Everything and everyone becomes a prop to maintain a 24/7 road show.

All politics is performative, but that doesn’t make every performance good politics. Rudy is looking good in this photo, but it also suggests that he is completely scripted. The chances that he will learn anything of value from his good buddy in the ball cap are about nil. About the same odds that a grey-haired worker would benefit from Rudy’s economic policies. The truth of this Democratic Moment is that Rudy might as well be kissing a baby.

Photograph by Erik S. Lesser for the New York Times.

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The Enjoyment of Poverty

This past week the NYT ran a brief story on an agreement struck between the Los Angles City Council and the ACLU of Southern California that will allow homeless people to sleep on the streets anywhere in the city (with some minor restriction), not just on skid row, between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Although the Times does not comment upon it per se, the compromise has turned out to be quite controversial, particularly among those who think that the very presence of the homeless outside of skid row would be unsightly, especially if they were to congregate near the “late night restaurants” in the downtown area or in front of Ralph’s (a high end supermarket) near the Staple’s Center. The Times’ story did not include any photographs. However, on the bottom right corner of the web page on which the story appeared there was an ad for the New York Times Store urging people to buy this photograph:

The caption/ad copy reads, “A Bag Lady in Times Square – 1965” and if one clicks on the image they discover that it is a photograph taken by Larry C. Morris and is part of the New York Times Buildings and Landmarks photo archive. Priced at $600 for an 11 x 14 exhibition quality print ($755 framed), the Times entreats its readers: “Give someone a unique gift that will last a lifetime or decorate your home and office with distinctive photography …”

The irony here is rich and it really is hard to know where to begin. Homelessness is among the biggest problems we face as a nation; and yet it is also a problem we steadfastly choose not to see. Who among us has not averted their gaze at one time or another from those sleeping on park benches or beneath underpasses, or those holding signs seeking money for food, as if to imagine that if we don’t see them then they aren’t really there. And what better way to avert our collective vision than to romanticize the homeless person as the “bag lady”—the eccentric and often addled but loveable older woman, carrying her possessions from spot to spot, refusing the help of social services, and often driven by a maternal instinct that fights its way through the layers of mismatched, threadbare and disheveled clothing she dons. Never mind that this is no longer the face of poverty and destitution—if it ever was; it helps us put a public veil on what is otherwise too hard (or inconvenient) to confront. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss. Seeing is believing.

Writing in 1934 Walter Benjamin noted that photography “has succeeded in transforming even abject poverty, by recording it in a fashionably perfected manner, into an object of enjoyment.” It may not just be a function of photography, as we find the commodification of poverty in other places as well, such as in the figurine culture; but as the Times demonstrates, it is very much at home in photography, and no less so than when cast in the black and white aesthetic of fine art photography and produced as an archival quality print that lends the aura of historical authenticity and the tinge of nostalgia to the image. As with another famous photograph from Times Square, this image seems to say, “that’s the way we were.” Here, it references a world where the homeless were bag ladies, and where bag ladies blended in with the commerce and culture around them, noticeable, but not uncomfortably so. We need not avert our gaze (as the man in the back looks on), but neither do we need to break stride to assist or intervene (as no one seems bothered by the woman’s presence). And what is left unsaid, but implied, is that we can salve our guilt by framing our awareness of poverty and homelessness through a lens that renders it as a fashionable “object of enjoyment.” So, you can donate $755 to a local homeless shelter or you can hang this picture on your wall. After all, it has an “enduring quality” that will “last a lifetime.”

Photo Credit: Larry C. Morris/New York Times

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Sight Gag: "Reality has a well known liberal bias."

October 14, 2007
Lucaites
sight gags
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Our primary goal with this blog is to talk about the ways in which photojournalism contributes to a vital democratic public culture. Much of the time that means we are focusing on what purport to be more or less serious matters. But as John Stewart and Stephen Colbert often remind us, democracy needs irony, parody, and pure silliness as much as it needs serious contemplation. For our part, we will dedicate our Sunday posts to putting some of that silliness on display in what we call “sight gags,” democracy’s nod to the carnivalesque. Sometimes we will post pictures we’ve taken, or that have been contributed by others, or that we just happen to stumble across as we navigate our very visual public culture. And we won’t just be limited to photography, as a robust democratic visual culture consists of much more. 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 capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.

Credit: Stephen Colbert, I Am America (And So Can You!)

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Photography & Culture: A Call For Papers

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When War Enters the Soul

It is said that the eyes are the window of the soul. I hope not, and here’s why:

The boy is looking into a car not long after mercenaries in the employ of the U.S. government had destroyed the two women in the front seat. Every line of the Times story provides evidence of how this criminal war has gone all but completely out of control. I could write for hours about how much is revealed by the incident, where, once again, innocents are slaughtered for supposedly threatening “security” forces that shouldn’t be there in the first place. And then there is the unholy mix of agencies and companies involved: AID, a “quasi-independent agency” of the State Department, hired RTI International, which hired “Unity Resources Group, an Australian-run security firm that has its headquarters in Dubai and is registered in Singapore.” And let us not overlook the language used by the Times, which labeled the mercenaries “contractors” in the print edition and “guards” online, both euphemisms.

But all that I might say pales next to the mute testimony given by this photo. The photographer has used the most common elements of visual composition to focus our attention on something extraordinary. We see the boy’s face in the center of the picture; he is isolated against a soft-toned background as in studio portraiture; successively tighter framings by the border of the photo, the left side window, and the right side window channel our attention to his expression; his face is soft, his eyes are wide open. His acute vulnerability is accentuated by the contrast with the blurry smear of blood on the metal surface in the foreground. Between the left door and the boy lies the interior of the car, now a dark, gory killing pen. He has looked down and seen the stain inside. He looks up, as if for an answer.

The photograph shows us many things, but the achievement is to show seeing–real seeing, when you can’t necessarily filter out or fully comprehend what you see–and to show how we are affected by what comes in through our eyes. This child has seen the traces of horror within that car without benefit of geopolitical framing or any other adult defense mechanism. And he has been harmed.

As with the rest of the composition, nothing new is involved: we see people seeing as they look back at the camera in one snapshot after another. We enjoy reaction shots when the birthday gifts are opened. But that isn’t really seeing, for everyone knows how to react and no damage is likely to be done. And we’re not in a war zone.

This blog has posted several times on the normalization of war in the U.S. We also try to point out how photojournalists are documenting the reverse process, the destruction of the basic requirements for normal life for those trapped in Iraq. Children will always try to see what is happening. There are some things they just shouldn’t have to see.

Photograph by Joao Silva for The New York Times.

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Playing Soldier

I was struck by this image when I came across it in the NYT this past week. At first I thought it was a scene from Iraq. But then I read the headline, “Paintball Accident Made Him a Widower, and Then A Crusader.” The story, it turns out, is not about the war in Iraq, but the latest version of the child’s game “Capture the Flag” played with guns that shoot paintball pellets at 300 ft/sec. It is, by some accounts, the fastest growing sport in America, and while a few people have actually died while playing it the more common injury seems to be to the eyes. A debate rages over whether paintball is more dangerous than basketball and football or safer than bowling, but all of this diverts attention from the way in which the “sport” contributes directly to the normalization of a war culture and the implications that that has for who and what we are as a people.

Paintball has become something of a growth industry, and as this picture indicates, it is played not just by children but by adults, and not just in the backyard, but in elaborately built sets that appeal to a dual sense of militaristic fantasy and realism. The aesthetics of the Times photograph reinforces the relationship between the fantastic and the real. Notice, for example, that the weaponry and equipment appear to be high-tech, perhaps something out of “Starship Troopers,” while the debris sitting behind the crumbling wall on the right side and the bombed out car in the background lend an air of realism. This could easily be a scene from Baghdad or some other war torn locality. But notice too how the soft focus on the left hand side of the screen and the blurred motion of the individual walking across the front of the visual plane lend a dreamy, surrealistic quality to the image, thus locating it in a fantasy world. So, you don’t have to join the military (or be hired by Blackwater) to “enjoy” the rush and excitement of going to war. You can do it from the luxury and safety of your local paintball park. It is a game played without any of the risks that attend real battles with live ammunition or opponents one feels compelled to kill (not just defeat) and who no doubt feel likewise. And a quick search for paintball guns and assorted paraphernalia make it clear that this is not a sport for the economically underprivileged. If you can’t afford a Humvee (or are not a U.S. Senator with access to military simulators), this might be the next best way to play at being a soldier without actually becoming one.

Photo Credit: Ann Johansson/New York Times

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Viva La Icon

BBC News ran a story and photo-essay on Friday that readers of this blog might enjoy. “Che: The Icon and the Ad” provides some of the background of this iconic image:

The story touches on several of the features of iconic appeal and circulation, and it argues that this is the iconic image. “Combining capitalism and commerce, religion and revolution, the icon remains unchallenged, Ms Ziff says. ‘There is no other image that remotely takes us to all these different places.'”

Ms Ziff has reason to be so high on the image, as her work on the Che icon includes as exhibition that opens this October and a film coming out in 2008. Some people like to debate whether this or that image is the most iconic of them all, but I’m not among them. The question does open up some interesting issues in this case, and I mention them in part because they address an omission in the book No Caption Needed. John and I focused exclusively on the US, as we weren’t prepared to study other national media. We are confident, however, that iconic images play an important role in some other pubic cultures, although not necessarily in all of them. We assume that they will work along the lines we identified but also reflect differences in media, society, and political history. Those differences may be incorporated easily into our theoretical framework in some cases, and in other cases they may require fundamental adjustments.

In addition, there also is the question of how icons circulate internationally and help constitute something like a transnational public culture. We are certain that the Che icon is not the most widely circulated iconic in the US, but it may well be internationally. Likewise, the range of appropriations shown in the slide show and flickr link accompanying the BBC story contains nothing surprising to those who know something about how images become iconic, but it could be that they work differently in a transnational context than they would within a more circumscribed media environment.

In any case, each icon provides a unique basis for talking about what we see, what has happened, who are are, and what paths lie before us. Indeed, it could well be that there is more than one reason for the Che image to come around again.

Update: Today’s New York Times is running a story on the Che icon. They feature Che’s daughter while emphasizing the supposed contradiction between socialist ideal and commercial success. There is tension there, of course, which is one reason the image is iconic. But don’t hold your breath for a companion story on the contradiction between a privately owned newspaper representing the public interest. Nor do they point to a contradiction when quoting an Investor’s Business Daily editorial decrying use of the image as “tyrant-chic.” I didn’t know that the Daily supported moral regulation of free enterprise. They ought to talk with Che’s daughter, who also is concerned about commercial use of the image.

It’s the 40th anniversary of Che’s death, so there will be a number of stories about the iconic image this week. Many of them will follow the conventions for reporting on iconic images, including personalizing the story and fretting about unrestricted circulation. I find it interesting that icons can be used to manage contradictions, and also to expose them.

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Kids "R" Props

A recent New York Times report on the Korean summit meeting was captioned with this photograph:

We are seeing the South Korean president returning home. For a moment, I thought it was taken in North Korea, where the Glorious Leader is regularly surrounded by the conventions of visual propaganda that you see above. Then again, it also could have been taken in the US:

As Michael Shaw pointed out at BagnewsNotes, these carefully posed images become even more incredible now that Bush has vetoed legislation to extend health insurance for children. Unfortunately, we know all too well that this president knows no shame. It might also be interesting to note how his use of kids as props puts him in interesting company. Guys like this, for example:

For all I know, Lenin may have done more for school children than Bush ever will, although that’s not saying much. It is clear that they both had the time to pose with kids for propaganda photos that were used to cover draconian policies. (This one is from a magazine accompanying the occupation of Latvia.) What remains to be shown, however, is where the template probably comes from, which is this iconic tableau:

The image of Jesus with the children refers to a story told in Mathew, Mark, and Luke (Mat. 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16). When his disciples had stopped those who were trying to bring children forward for a blessing, Jesus rebuked his self-appointed campaign managers. The scene has been reproduced in various images countless times in many art forms, high and low. It will have been put to many uses, including church propaganda and social hegemony. (For the record, Jesus will not have been blond.)

There is much that could be said about the relationship between the religious icon and secular image-management. Let me just note two things: First, there is no indication in the story that Jesus posed with the children. As Mathew tells it, “he laid his hands on the children, and went his way.” Second, the point of the story is not that Jesus liked kids or that they liked him. No, the story is about gatekeeping. To say that “the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these” meant that no one was barred from that Kingdom because they lacked status or power. In welcoming the children–and rebuking those who would keep the weak, dependent, or socially inferior out of sight–Jesus was upending the hierarchies that structured that society. That idea has been forgotten when kids can become props for sham displays of compassion by cynical rulers.

Photographs: pool photo; Charles Dharapak/Associated Press; back cover of ”Darba sieviete” magazine, # 1, 1940. Stained Glass window from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Roman Catholic Church. My reading of the Biblical text is indebted to Albert Nolan, Jesus Before Christianity. The quoted text is from the New English Bible.

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