3.Project 2: Digitising Atrocity:Research

Research point:

For an in-depth discussion of the role of the photograph and video in rituals, see Grimes, R.L. (2006) Rite out of Place: Ritual, Media and the Arts, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

For a general introduction to the topic of death and photography, see Wells, 2009, p.244. For more on post mortem photography, see Linkman, A. (2011) Photography & Death (Exposures), London: Reaktion Books and Ruby, J. (1995) Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Visible Care: Nan Goldin and Andres Serrano’s Post-mortem Photography | Lauren Barnett (Summersgill)

This is a thesis project which reviews much of the other work mentioned in the research options. Since I was having difficulty locating some of this material and since Andreas Serrano is a favourite photographer of mine I thought this a good way of researching the topic of post mortem photography.

I think it is a macabre topic and could not imagine developing an interest in it. One would have to be young to be interested in it and not be disquieted by it. As one advances in age the spectre of death is very real so the idea of post mortem images would concern us as the subject. I don’t want to be photographed after I am dead, presupposing I don’t die in an accident or as the result of a crime. I want living images of myself with and for my children and grandchildren. (I must remember to add this request to my post death info package for my children – NO DEAD IMAGES!)

The photographer of my First Communion was a personal family friend and his day job was a police photographer. We were fascinated by what macabre subjects he must have photographed. I was reminded of this by Barnett’s mention of Jeffery Silverthorne’s Morgue series.(2) but also in the Channel 4 video (3) mentioned in Barnett’s thesis which I watched. The police photographer reminded me of my parents friend Mr. Horgan. He was, like the man in the video, a quietly spoken man, a practising Catholic also. He was at pains to do his job well but to respect the dead.

I can much better understand police type post mortem photography than Andreas Serrano’s photographing random bodies from a morgue – why would one want to do this? In the above video (3) a young artist Sue Fox , at least explains why she was doing her series. She wanted to better understand death and to see inside bodies to learn about it’s fragility. As we get older the bodies’ fragility becomes more and more evident, no matter how hard one works to try to preserve it’s strength. But this is a normal part of life. Death is just the final scenario. She was mature enough to realise that life must be lived to its full. When our children worry about our travelling escapades we try to assure them that we will die happy, if we do so, in some far flung place, with backpacks on and heads down against the wind. But my daughter has had a too close brush with death to be calmed by this. She lost her first husband at the age of 34. The last image of him was with his head thrown back, laughing, this was one week before his death, coming down a snow slope, on a snow mobile and then an undiagnosed heart disease just took him in a moment. He had very few chapters in his life’s book and I would hate the last picture in the chapter to be replaced by a post mortem image although I am sure one exists as there was a post mortem.

Barnett’s claims that in the twentieth century death became ‘invisible‘ left to the professionals. She speaks of the United States as if the whole world was following suit. But death in Ireland never became invisible. I was called, at the age of 17, to my neighbours back garden where her husband had just died from a heart attack. I do not remember being frightened but waited with the body holding his hand until a medic arrived in a couple of moments. Two years later we nursed my father to his very untimely death at the age of 54. I was a final year University student and all my college mates came to the funeral and sympathised with me and my mother. Our house was open and people came by to pray and be with us. In many other cultures, for example India, death has never been hushed away. The body is borne through the streets to the burning pile. People express their grief openly.

Read Peggy Phelan’s essay ‘Atrocity and Action: The Performative Force of the Abu Ghraib Photographs’ in Batchen, G. et al (eds.) (2012) Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis,London: Reaktion Books, pp.51 – 61. You’ll find this on the student website (PH5DIC_ Picturing Atrocity_Atrocity and Action).

Film: The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (Dir. Rory Kennedy, 2007)(3)

I read Peggy Phelan’s article through once but could not make sense of it so I decided to watch the film by Rory Kennedy. I got to minute 52 but could not watch any more. It was beyond shocking. It was , to me, totally incomprehensible. I am aware that there will always be people who carry out torture because they appear not to have the same standards of right and wrong. I remember seeing an interview with a man on death row and his father. The guy who was about to die wanted to die as he felt he could not function in a ‘normal’ world. He had a different set of values of right and wrong. The young military police in Abu Graib, knew what they were doing and witnessing was wrong but they lacked the moral courage to shout this out. They had been ‘conditioned’ by the army.

Phelan claims that if one looks at an atrocity photo frequently enough one becomes ‘conditioned’ to it and is less shocking. I totally disagree with this. These Abu Graib images shock me more every time I see them. How the Americans viewed them was, of course, different as to how i viewed them. It was not my fellow countrymen performing these horrific tortures. But I do believe that Americans also felt pain for the victims in the images – how could they not?

The Abu Ghraib photos create more blind spots. …..these photographs expose the essential blindness that constitutes the act of seeing as such

What exactly is Phelan trying to say here – I have no idea. She goes on to make complicated explanations about the victims heads being covered and this fact indicating the connection between being alive and dead. I feel the explanation is much simpler – the torturers did not want the prisoners to be able to recognise them or they lacked the courage to look into the eyes of those they were torturing.

In explaining the justification for taking these picture she says the oxymoronic character of discourse presses her…. The young MP, in the film, explained very simply why she took the pictures. She took them because she took photographs of everything all the time.

Two things I do agree with in this paper is Phelan’s statement The various interpretations of these photographs are partial. We were not there we did not see the whole scene so we only have the image in front of is. Also I believe the image of “Gilligan on the box” is a symbol of all that we cannot – or do not want to- understand about how it came to this. We see the limit of our capacity to see.

Of course we all react differently to seeing or not actually ‘seeing’ these images but I do believe they were a game changer.

Read about Abdel Karim Khalil’s We Are Living the American Democracy at Link 2 (4)

This reminds me of what was happening in northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’. Many like Seamus Heaney found material for their writing in the terrible situations before their eyes.

But my tentative art

His turned back watches too:

He was blown to bits

Out drinking in a curfew

Others obeyed, three nights

After they shot dead

The thirteen men in Derry.

PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,

BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday

Everyone held

His breath and trembled.

Khalil sound’s like Heaney, a kindly soft spoken man just wanting to create his art but haunted by what he has seen. Those that ‘collaborated’ with the Saddam regime cannot be judged. They had to eat. Artists did likewise in the Natzi regime. I feel that only the victims of war and occupation have the right to make art about what has happened in their country. Anyone else, no matter how strongly they feel, outside the affected country, should leave the creation of the war inspired art to those within the regime. I cannot imagine how painful this creation must be, a sort of exorcism. I can see no point in Hans Haacke’s work,

Film:Standard Operating Procedure (Dir. Errol Morris, 2008)

I could not find a copy of this film but looked at a 9min YouTube(5) with Errol Morris and read a Guardian review(6). The review was less than complimentary about the documentary. The critic complained about syrupy music, about the interviewees moving positions. But Morris really did want to see some of those higher up in the US military held responsible for the atrocities. Of course, as always in war, those responsible never get caught they send out the fodder to do their dirty works.

This whole Abu Ghraib catastrophe has got me thinking again about how or why we, the human race, can behave so basely.

Visible Care: Nan Goldin and Andres Serrano’s Post-mortem Photography | Lauren Barnett (Summersgill) – Academia.edu. 2019. Visible Care: Nan Goldin and Andres Serrano’s Post-mortem Photography | Lauren Barnett (Summersgill) – Academia.edu. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.academia.edu/35979033/Visible_Care_Nan_Goldin_and_Andres_Serrano_s_Post-mortem_Photography. [Accessed 05 March 2019].
TIME. 2019. Photographing the Dead: Jeffrey Silverthorne’s Morgue. [ONLINE] Available at: http://time.com/photographing-the-dead/. [Accessed 05 March 2019]
1,YouTube. 2019. GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl9q3zpcHcE. [Accessed 06 March 2019].
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/nov/22/art-iraq
YouTube. 2019. Errol Morris, Standard Operating Procedure – YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S106yzPRujM. [Accessed 07 March 2019].
The Guardian. 2019. Review: Standard Operating Procedure | Film | The Guardian. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/jul/18/documentary. [Accessed 07 March 2019].