A Question Prompted by The World Press Photo Awards

A man throwing the body of a dead child at the morgue of the
general hospital, Port-au-Prince, Jan. 15, 2010.
(AP Photo/Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP)

I came across this photograph at "In Focus" over at The Atlantic where it was part of this post showing some of the 2011 World Press Photo winners in various categories. I generally take a pretty permissive stance on what is a justifiable subject for photography - whether art or documentary or photojournalism. There are lots of things that are a waste of time, or simply not to my taste, but so what. I am not too patient with the squeamish.

There are a lot of things about the world that it is hard to imagine. And photography is, as philosopher Patrick Maynard points out, a technology that usefully amplifies our capacity to imagine. Generally, I think this is a necessary task. And it identifies the intersection of politics and photography understood (regardless of genre) as an art. This image takes me right up to - maybe across - the bounds of possibility. I find it excruciating. And, no, I cannot imagine being this child's sibling or parent or neighbor. And I cannot imagine, either, being the worker at the morgue.

On the other hand, this is the reality of an epidemic. I have just shown my undergraduate students films on James Nachtwey and Sebastião Salgado, both of whom photographed the mass deaths from cholera in the refugee camps housing Hutus who had fled following the genocide in Rwanda. Their images depict earth moving equipment being used to scoop up piles of corpses and dumping them in mass graves. Gruesome, but important in keeping the epidemic from getting worse. This photograph nevertheless seems worse - meaning more brutal - to me.

So, my question is whether this image crosses the line. I am undecided. It seems as though various editors are undecided too. You will not find it reproduced among the images in the report of the WPP awards at The Guardian [1] or the BBC [2]; but it is included without comment in the reports at The National Geographic [3] and The New York Times [4]. At The Atlantic you have to click through this message - Warning: This image may contain graphic or objectionable content. Click to view image - before viewing the image.

Disaster, Photojournalism, and Group-think

I have been pondering the relationships between photography and disaster lately. The problem is not, I think, that photographers somehow exploit the stricken, although the squeamishness of those safely reading reading the paper at a distance (and especially their too readily expressed resentment at being confronted with disturbing images) is pretty telling. What is troubling is how little the images actually show us. There are conventions and stereotypes galore. This comes out very nicely in this post over at The New York Times photo blog. We are shown eight variations on the same image (including one by photo-deity James Nachtwey). And I am certain the post's author could've done the same with other images (say of desperate earthquake victims, arms outstretched amide the crush of others, reaching for food or water at an aid distribution center). If the photographers are not traveling in packs, their editors back home surely are thinking in packs. This is not a problem just with photographers and photo-editors (follow the first link above to Rebecca Solnit's reflections on how, in the wake of disaster*, news reports invoke the spectre of "looting" in knee-jerk ways). But it is a problem for them - or at least the visual coverage of the Haitian earthquake and its aftermath suggests it is.
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* I want to call Chris Anderson on the notion that disasters like an earthquake or Tsunami are 'natural' and so call forth the need for inquiry. He cannot be that naive. He claims (in The Times post) that in such cases: "There is no need for explanation or contemplation." There are no 'natural' disasters. In each case the extent and impact of the damage and resulting misery is closely tied to political-economic factors. On that point follow the links in the first post above to this post by economist Ed Glaeser.

Haiti Digest

Amid the flood of media attention to the Haiti disaster I've noticed three particularly interesting pieces.

First there is this hand-wringing blog post at npr in which the author trots out the standard worries that photos of the disaster are somehow exploitative. There is not much new in the argument, but the comment thread indicates that many people find the worries more or less wholly misplaced. I agree. Do you have any idea what it is like to make your way through streets littered with corpses or pancaked buildings? I don't. The images give us some sense. They help us imagine how horrible conditions really can become.

The second piece is a this blog post by economist Ed Glaeser in which he calls attention to research that identifies a strong relationship between the impact of 'natural' disasters (in terms of mortality) and the prior political-economic circumstances of the relevant countries. He rightly suggests that, in addition to supporting immediate humanitarian intervention, we consider as well how to mitigate the conditions that render 'natural' disasters especially deadly.

Finally, there is this audio interview from the CBC with Rebecca Solnit on panicky elites (including many members of the press) and the assumption that if they are not in control everything must be out of control.
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P.S. (added 1/21/2010): You can find a short essay in which Solnoit covers much the same ground here at Tomdispatch.