Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis

Description

Ever since the landmark publication of Susan Sontag's On Photography, it has been impossible to look at photographs, particularly those of violence and suffering, without questioning our role as photographic voyeur. Are we desensitized by the proliferation of these images? Or do the images stir our own sense of justice and act as a call to arms? Are we consuming the suffering of others?What should our responses to these images be? To answer these questions, Picturing Atrocity brings together essays from some of the foremost writers on photography today.

Geoffrey Batchen is a photography historian and Professor of Art History at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Mick Gidley is Emeritus Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Leeds, UK. Nancy K. Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, the Graduate Center, CUNY. Jay Prosser is Reader in Humanities in the School of English at the University of Leeds, UK.

"There are some subtle and effective examinations of the space where art and horror meet, and what's notable throughout is the way the text surrounds the terrible images in an almost Lilliputian attempt to restrain their power."-- "The Australian" "For all the monographic studies and collected volumes, however, even those devoted specifically to photography, none has explored the terrain as expansively or assiduously as Picturing Atrocity. . . . An ambitious and important book, each essay offering an illuminating encounter with a fragment of the photographic archive of injustice and suffering. . . . As much an encounter with the history of modernity as it is with the medium of photography, Picturing Atrocity is a deeply ethical study of images. . . . This volume, with its concise yet purposeful introduction by Jay Prosser and its consistently persuasive and engaging essays by the other editors and contributors, makes a case for why photography, whatever its forms, mattered then, matters now, and will continue to matter in the years to come."-- "CAA reviews" "It is hard to look: My Lai, Dachau, Abu Ghraib, Wounded Knee. We know these atrocities through the painful evidence of unforgettable documentary photographs. But these images are far from innocent. Just as 'atrocity' itself is a loaded term, every photograph of such an event is a bit of high-level propaganda in a moralized political argument, encouraging the viewer to bear witness, make judgments, take sides. This important new collection of essays by some of the most brilliant analysts of photography shows how deliberately horrifying pictures have shaped--and continue to shape--the ethics and politics of the modern era." --Brian Wallis, Chief Curator, International Center of Photography, New York "Brian Wallace, International Center of Photography" "Picturing Atrocity is an excellent examination of the dilemmas implicit in photography's representation of human suffering, whether caused by torture, war, poverty, the political chaos and neglect that multiplies the toll from natural disasters (as in Africa's Horn region today), or other gross rights violations. Multilayered and lucid, these essays demolish any lingering pretence that images of suffering can be understood without also considering the context and media in which they are presented, and the often far-from-the-scene viewer who consumes them. Picturing Atrocity is critical reading for communicators in the aid, development and human rights communities who participate in the dissemination of these essential but volatile images." --Ellen Tolmie, UNICEF Sr. Photography Editor