Viewing Katrina: Disaster Fatigue?

Yesterday Joerg Colberg commented on an interesting post from the day before at Exposure Project (EP) worrying about the potential negative side-effects the proliferation of photography documenting the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina might generate. The post indeed raises a set of important questions, albeit in ways that, I think, reflect too narrow a range of considerations. So, I figure I will join the conversation.

Here is the gist of the EP post: "In the two years since, the world has seen thousands of hours of news footage and viewed innumerable still photographs depicting the devastation of both the landscape, and the livelihoods of the people affected. In a media-saturated world, the bombardment of imagery can have both a positive and negative influence on how we view the world. In one respect, media has allowed information and imagery to be widely accessible to millions of people who might not otherwise be able to obtain it. On the other hand, the over-saturation of this imagery can act as a numbing agent to people's sensitivity to important world events."

In short EP rightly refer to the plethora of work by photographers like Larry Towell, Robert Polidori, Chris Jordan, Katherine Wolkoff among others and worry about what we might call disaster fatigue. Do all these images desenistize audiences?

(1) First, it is a mistake to call Katrina as the EP folk do "the most destructive natural disaster the United States has ever seen." By this I do not mean to question their assessment of magnitude. Rather, I mean it is a mistake to characterize Katrina as a natural disaster. The lack of preparedness, the long-term neglect of levees and other infrastructure, the differential impact on residents of varying races and classes and ages, the wholly chaotic and inadequate response to Katrina all are political matters. "Katrina" and its aftermath are easily as much about those factors as they are about wind and rain and storm surges.

Why is this important? Because disasters typically are not "natural" - think, for instance, not just of war or genocide, but of forced displacement or famine or epidemic or environmental degradation. And that means we need to ask hard questions about, say, causality and responsibility (and, hence, effective remdies) not just about hardship and suffering. How can we use photography to help reveal the former rather than becoming mired in the latter?

(2) This leads to a favorite topic of mine, namely the uses of photography? Are we restricted to evoking "emotional responses" (say, compassion or sympathy or pity or empathy for victims) among viewers? Are we concerned simply to convery "information" or "news"? Or, might we, aspire to other aims - such as, again, raising questions about causality, or evoking solidarity, or suggesting remedies?

If we treat photography as a technology with a variety of possible uses then this question is unavoidable. And then we are not inevitably led to the question posed at Exposure Project (which, by the way, echo long standing concerns articulated by, say John Berger or Susan Sontag.)

(3) Are there grounds, beyond casual introspection, by which to assess whether or not viewing too many photographs of disaster or catastrophe actually numbs or desensitizes viewers? I know of no social scientific studies that show this. I am not saying that it does not occur, but it seems to me inadequate to simply say "This is how I respond" to repeatedly seeing such images ... After all, this is an empirical claim about causality and effects. I obviously don't think the EP folk need to perform systematic studies, but their worries are sufficiently common that someone ought to have done so.

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I guess, in the end, I think the EP post provides perfect evidence for why just putting pictures out there is not enough. We need words too - conversations and debates and discussions. There are all sorts of important, unexamined theoretical issues embedded in the question - the quite conventional question - that the folks at EP raise and that,as it turns out, concerns Jeorg too. The images of Katrina by Towell, and Polidori, Wolkoff and Jordan are, in this respect, of a piece with those of Burtynsky (and others), about which I have posted here recently. What do they show? what are they meant to achieve? Are they well suited to such ends? Are there alternatives?