On Looking

[Content Note: Discussion of photos of tragedy and suffering. References to human atrocities. Please note there is an image of a starving child at the link.]

Last Thursday, Maaza Mengiste wrote a thought-provoking piece for the Guardian about news photos, particularly regarding crises in Africa, and balancing "our capacity to bear witness and our need to protect our capacity for compassion."

"Photographs of violence ask us to bear witness to atrocity," writes Mengiste. "Bearing witness begs us to respond. When there is nothing left to do, it is easy to fall prey to numbing helplessness and confusion. …It is easier to back away from those photographs until some event, too catastrophic to ignore, tells us how we should react. In the meantime, we try to forget."

I have so many thoughts about this piece. Or, more accurately, thoughts inspired by this piece.

Which is intended wholly as a compliment to Mengiste, who wrote something that challenged me to think about my own reactions to news photos of atrocities.

I have very mixed feelings about such pictures—though I agree with Mengiste who observes that these photos exhort us to recognize and empathize with the individual humans who are being harmed, or struggling for their very survival.

There's an old Eddie Izzard bit that cleverly and insightfully indicts our ability to process large-scale suffering. It may seems strange to insert a comedy piece here, but, as anyone knows who is an Eddie Izzard fan, his comedy is not just about making his audience laugh.

[And Hitler was a mass-murdering fuckhead, as many important] …historians have said. But there are other mass murderers that got away with it! Stalin killed many millions; died in his bed—well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians; died under house arrest, age 72—well done indeed!

And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. "Ah, help yourself!" You know? "We've been trying to kill you for ages!"

So, kill your own people, right on there. Seems to be…! Hitler killed people next door. "Oh… Stupid man." After a couple of years, we won't stand for that, will we?

Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people. We can't even deal with that! I think, you know, we think if somebody kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. If you kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick; that's what they do. Twenty people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever.

And over that, we can't deal with it, you know? Somebody's killed 100,000 people—we're almost going, "Well done! Well done! You killed 100,000 people?! You must get up very early in the morning. I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death, lunch, death, death, death, afternoon tea, death, death, death, quick shower…"

You know. So I suppose we're glad that Pol Pot's under house arrest…

What he is saying here is a true thing—and it's true not just for people who do harm on a massive scale, but about people who are suffering on a massive scale. One person, and many of us will reach out to help, will feel like there's something we can do to help this one person in need. One community, and many of us will reach out to help, will feel like there's something we can do to help this community of people in need. But as the numbers rise, when it's tens of thousands of people, when it's millions, suddenly many of us begin to feel overwhelmed. And helpless.

Mengiste argues that pictures documenting individual need can be calls to action, can help us transcend those feelings of being overwhelmed.

And I think that's right.

But I still have mixed feelings about pictures that highlight suffering, even knowing how powerful they can be.

This is partly because I'm concerned about consent: Although I think that responsible news photographers are getting better and better about seeking consent from their human subjects, the ubiquity of cameras, now available to and present with virtually anyone who carries a mobile phone, combined with the media's increasing reliance on witness photos, means that consent is deprioritized in favor of fast and immersive photos.

(In fact, it often appears as though media's ability to reproduce amateur photography is a way of justifying invasiveness and lack of consent that may violate many professional photographers' ethics.)

This is not such a concern in a place like South Sudan, so I'm moving a bit far afield from Mengiste's focus, but it's one of the reasons that we now have related conversations about "disaster porn," and it's one of the reasons I often host image-free threads in the immediate wake of tragedies.

But a drought, a famine, an ongoing war is not a sudden tragedy, but an incremental and sustained one. Is there a compelling difference; do I feel differently about images to compel action there, as opposed to images documenting the aftermath of an unexpected, devastating event?

I think the answer to that is yes. I find a distinction there. And I feel differently about them as a result.

But that's just me. Which brings me to my final thought: People don't all respond the same way to images documenting atrocities.

I don't just mean that some people are compelled to action and some are indifferent—although that, too—but that even people disposed to be compelled to action respond to different types of images.

Any charitable organization that does fundraising and/or awareness-raising on behalf of people (or animals) tends to use images for that objective. And there are some groups that go for the tragic imagery documenting suffering, and some that go for imagery that highlights successes—"this is the difference your help can make."

(Think: Sad Sarah McLachlan suffering animal adverts vs. Billy's Rescue Story, for example.)

The former makes me shut down and feel overwhelmed (there's a reason I use the teaspoon concept), whereas the latter is very appealing to me.

But that's just me (and people who share that response). There are some for whom the other sort of images are more motivating calls to action.

Charitable fundraising does not have the same objective as the media, but the thought about how some people respond better to images of successful intervention in charitable fundraising makes me wonder whether there's a correlative approach in news photography, e.g. highlighting the way people are surviving, indicting the necessity of the way they are having to survive but providing a glimpse of hope that there is still a way to make a difference for survivors.

Maybe there isn't another approach. Maybe there isn't now, but should be.

In any case, I will give the final word to Mengiste: "To deny our own human reactions makes it easier to deny the humanity of those who are photographed. Though we cannot change what has happened, we can alter the symbolism attached to the images. Photographs can be more than a reminder of cruelty and the inevitable aftermath of war. There are narratives unfolding right now in South Sudan, in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo that can be rewritten. We have the ability to strip away what we're supposed to see—just another African victim—and gaze upon what we should: a human being. But first, we have to look."

Discuss.

[H/T to Shaker Brunocerous.]