Junk for Code

Sontag: Regarding the pain of Others # 11

The eleventh part of Rick's project on Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of the Others deals with the ethics of photography. My comments on the tenth part can be found here

The relationship between ethics and photography is usually discussed in terms of the ethics of manipulating the image; even more so with the digital turn.

But the topic of ethics and photography is much broader than this. For instance, as photographs of certain areas of the cultural landscape of Kata Tjuta:

(photo by
Quang-Tuan Luong/terragalleria.com)

and Uluru:

(photo by
Quang-Tuan Luong/terragalleria.com)

in Central Australia are not permitted by the park's traditional owners. Thus the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta is off limits to photography, as it is a sacred site. Taking photos of this area is considered to be wrong and immoral.

We can broaden the discussion on the ethics of photography by taking these considerations by Grazia Neri on board:

'The 20th Century is the century of photographs. ... Joy, pain, birth, death ... everything is visible and photographers themselves no longer recognize the limits of the permissible, beyond which their eyes, their cameras, the final product may wound the people photographed or the public...

..... feel strong perplexities about news items. I do not agree with the publication of photographs that celebrate private pain, such as those showing a crowd of people in an airport who know that they have lost their loved ones in an accident, or people who have been arrested. I cannot bear, either, photographs taken in courtrooms, and I appreciate the law that exists in some American states banning the use of cameras in courtrooms. For children in difficulty, I believe that the law on privacy has made some proper corrections to the excesses of past years, but care is needed. Obscuring the face of the child is not sufficient, since even a coat can make a person recognizable and therefore vulnerable. I felt sorry for the life and death of Lady Diana, but I was indignant about the unfair accusation of photographers in contributing to her death. It is possible to escape the flashes of the cameras. All one has to do is to avoid the St. Tropez - Emerald Coast - Paris Ritz "paparazzi tour.'

Now with all that on the table we can turn to what Sontag says on ethics and photography. Once again we deal with the issues through the juxtaposition of photograph and text. The photograph selected by Rick is this one:

It is of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith and a large gathering of lynchers. (August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana) – The photo is from the collection of lynching photos at “Without Sanctuary” (it can be found as no.27) and the additional information refers to the mob breaking into a jail, beating the African Americans senseless, mutilating their bodies stringing them up, then posed for their photos under the tree.

And the text? What does Sontag make of this? She begins by saying:

“The lynching pictures tell us about human wickedness. About inhumanity. They force us to think about the extent of the evil unleashed specifically by racism." (Sontag, p.91)

That is fair enough. However, Sontag avoids the politics of lynching in the US, since her words---'Wickedness', 'inhumanity' and 'evil'---- are the categories of ethics. This ethical language is entirely appropriate when dealing with the suffering caused by racism.

What does Sontag say about this photograph? She points the finger at the photographer, the spectators and us. She says:

"Intrinsic to the perpetration of this evil is the shamelessness of photographing it. The pictures were taken as souvenirs and made, some of them, into postcards; more than a few show grinning spectators, good churchgoing citizens as most of them had to be, posing for a camera with the backdrop of a naked, charred, mutilated body hanging from tree. The display of these pictures makes us spectators, too."

We are spectators as readers of the image. We are reading an historical image looking at the past practices. For some of us readers we are looking at history of a foreign culture. From the perspective of someone in living in Australia, where capital punishment is banned, our initial response is that we are looking at a barbaric custom of the US.

It is very difficult for us in Australia to understand this custom with its roots in slavery based on a master slave relationship. Difficult until we think of the way that aborigines in Australia have been treated by whites that I referred to when commenting on the fitfh part of Rick's project.

Sontag then poses a question. She asks, "What is the point of exhibiting these pictures?" It is a good question because the cultural politics of these photo postcards are quite different from the popular song, Strange Fruit.

We can interpret 'exhibiting the photos'in two ways: then or now.

If now, then the first response is that the exhibition of the photos now [in a book (see more backlist) and online] is an uncovering a forgotten history. In Australia the exhibiting such photos would be a counter history to what has been buried in pioneer texts such as this.

The phrases "when local aboriginal attacks became fierce" a fourth reserve "became an area for the benefit of Aboriginal people; "the recorded history of the reserve [can be gleaned] from the additional information in Police Archives in Brisbane"; "the term 'dispersed' in the literature and police dispatches when made in reference to dealing with Aboriginal people was in fact a code for code for killing Aboriginal people in the early days.

Another history can be told about the killing of indigenous Australians. On such history is here

'Exhibiting the photos then refers to exhibiting the photos as postcards in the early twentieth century. Now these photos are not simply historical documents:

This is more than a visual report. Postcards such as these are political statements in a campaign waged against African Americans. The images are being used as a political weapon in a campaign of terrorism in the American South.

The text to the above photo postcard (taken around 1900) says that it is the "bludgeoned body of an African American male, propped in a rocking chair, blood splattered clothes, white and dark paint applied to the face and head, shadow of man using rod to prop up the victims head." (location unknown)

The additional information refers to the mob taking 5 African Americans from civil authorities, torturing them with knives, before hanging them and riddling the bodies with bullets. It was one of the largest multiple lynchings in the 20th century and it is about power. The leaders of the mob were caught and imprisoned by the state government of Carolina in an attempt to restore law and order.

The local photographers were a part of the mob. They sided with the mob.These are not critical images. They affirm what is going on. As can be seen here with the uses made of the postcard. For instance,

The hair in the frame is that of one of the victims.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at August 2, 2003 12:05 PM | TrackBack