REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS

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REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS
Based on the book by Susan Sontag, Regarding the
Pain of Others, and Kenneth Kobres
PHOTOJOURNALISM The Professionals Approach
PowerPoint Presentation by David Blumenkrantz
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How are photographs of atrocities and
catastrophic events displayed in the print media?
How are they perceived by the public?
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For decades, this photograph by Arthur Rothstein
was considered a classic of the Dust Bowl era. In
recent years, Rothsteins negatives have been
discovered, revealing that he had likely directed
this scene more than once, to ensure the maximum
compositional effect . . .
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The first justification for the brutally legible
pictures of dead soldiers, which clearly violated
a taboo, was the simple duty to record. The
camera is the eye of history, Brady is supposed
to have said . . . In the name of realism one
was permitted-- required-- to show hard,
unpleasant facts.
What is odd is not that so many of the iconic
news photos of the past, including some of the
best remembered pictures from the Second World
War, appear to have been staged. It is that we
are surprised to learn they were staged, and
always disappointed.
(Sontag 52-53)
Dead Confederate Soldier, 1865. Photographer
Unknown.
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Photos by Stan Forman, Boston Herald-American
This fire escape collapsed during a fire,
plunging a woman to her death the child
miraulously survived. After this picture ran on
hundreds of front pages around the country,
telephone calls and letters deluged newspapers,
charging sensationalism, invasion of privacy,
insensitivity, and tasteless display of human
tragedy-- all to sell newspapers. This series of
images earned the photographer a Pulitzer Prize
in 1976.
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Readers of the Detroit Free Press were jolted by
a front-page photograph of a fireman carrying a
dead child from a home in which seven brothers
and sisters locked alone inside had died in a
fire. Initially readers complained . . . but
within a few days calls and letters supporting
the papers decision came in . . .
Its a good thing that I dont make the final
call . . . on what runs on page one. If I did, I
would have spread that picture across the entire
page. I would have made a huge poster out of it
and hung it from the top of this building and
City Hall and even the Capitol in Lansing. I
would have done it as a chilling reminder of the
ungodly risks we take with our children . .
. Susan Watson, Detroit Free Press columnist
Photo by Bill Eisner, Detroit Free Press
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Pity can entail a moral judgment if, as
Aristotle maintains, pity is considered to be
the emotion we owe only to those enduring
undeserved misfortune. (Sontag 75)
The Bakersfield-Californian received 400 phone
calls, 500 letters, and a bomb threat, and the
editor ran an apology to the readers. The number
of drownings in the Bakersfield area dropped from
fourteen in the previous month, to just two in
the month after the paper printed the photo.
Photo by John Harte, Bakersfield-Californian
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This image was part of W. Eugene Smiths work to
expose the effects of mercury poisoning in the
Japanese fishing industry. In 1998, pundits were
outraged when Smiths widow heeded the pleas of
the Uemura family to bar all future use of this
image of their daughter. The family cited an
increasing demand for interviews and public
scrutiny, due to the fame of the photograph
itself.
Tomoko is bathed by her mother, by W. Eugene
Smith, 1971
Transforming is what art does, but photography
that bears witness to the calamitous and the
reprehensible is much criticized if it seems
aesthetic that is, too much like art. The dual
powers of photography-- to generate documents and
to create works of visual art-- have produced
some remarkable exaggerations about what
photographers out or ought not to do. Photographs
that depict suffering shouldnt be beautiful, as
captions shouldnt moralize. In this view, a
beautiful photograph drains attention from the
sobering subject and turns it toward the medium
itself, thereby compromising the pictures status
as a document. (Sontag 77)
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With our dead, there has always been a powerful
interdiction against showing the naked face . . .
This is a dignity not thought necessary to accord
to others. (Sontag 70)
On a mission to provide food for starving
Somalians, an American soldier was killed and
then dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.
The picture was so powerful that it helped to
change U.S. policy toward involvement in Somalia.
Photo by Paul Watson, Toronto Star
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The more remote or exotic the place, the more
likely we are to have full frontal views of the
dead and dying. Thus postcolonial Africa exists
in the consciousness of the general public . . .
mainly as a succession of unforgettable
photographs of large-eyed victims . . . (Sontag
70)
Photos by David Blumenkrantz, 1994
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Self-censorship, or tasteful discretion? Like
many papers across the country, the L.A. Times
decided to run these photographs deep inside the
front section.
Being a spectator of calamities taking place in
another country gives us a quintessential modern
experience, the cumulative offering of more than
a century and a halfs worth of those
professional, specialized tourists known as
journalists. (Sontag 18)
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We know (the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib)
is real, we saw the pictures. President Bush, as
reported on FOX News, 5/8/04
Meanwhile, the The Daily Shows Jon Stewart
reported that Paul Wolfowitz had characterized
the abuse charges as freedom tickling!
Los Angeles Times
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But do people want to be horrified? Indeed,
the very notion of atrocity, of war crime, is
associated with the expectation of photographic
evidence. For photographs to accuse, and
possibly to alter conduct, they must
shock. Shock can become familiar. Shock can wear
off. Even if it doesnt one can not
look. (Sontag 81-83)
Daily Mirror, Britain
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SCIENCE OR SADISM?
As everyone has observed, there is a mounting
level of acceptable violence and sadism in mass
culture . . . Imagery that would have had an
audience cringing and recoiling in disgust forty
years ago is watched without so much as a blink
by every teenager in the multiplex. Indeed,
mayhem is entertaining rather than shocking to
many people in most modern cultures. (Sontag 100)