Chapter Three: Warsaw, Lodz, Auschwitz: In the Waiting Room of Death
With Chapter Three Linfield begins an exploration of Place and Event, including the Nazi extermination camps, China’s Cultural Revolution, Sierra Leone’s civil war, and images from the wars of the Middle East.
Beginning with the Holocaust she examines the arguments surrounding the very powerful images of suffering and cruelty, specifically those produced by the Nazis themselves. She observes that such images are some of the most morally vexing as they depict people soon to be murdered. They demonstrate quite clearly that photographs in themselves have no moral power or authority. (And in a footnote - p72 - that such images published in wartime generally did not provoke the hoped for responses.) What does it mean, then, to look at such photos? Should we look? If so, how?
Linfield summarizes a dispute in French journals over a 2001 exhibit of Holocaust photos, Memoirs de Champs (p88). She identifies two positions: rejectionists and transcendentalists. The rejectionists claim that such photos should never be published or exhibited, that to look at them revictimizes the victims, that the lookers themselves become victimizers. “In this view, the very structure of such photographs, and the sinister circumstances of their making, reproduce the ideology of the victimizers: and can do only that. Such images, the rejectionists claim, are totalitarian in the literal sense of the word, allowing only one possible response. (p70)”
Linfield is baffled by what she see as the rejectionists’ “intellectual helplessness” and notes her ability to remain objective while reading Mein Kampf, for example. When looking at such photos, she says, what she sees are portraits of Nazi self-degradation. “Each of these pictures measures just how far outside the realm of the recognizably human the Nazis had thrust themselves; they depict the photographer as much as the subject. (p71)” She goes on to note that even though such images were made by Nazis, they were used during wartime to publicize Nazi atrocities. Would the rejectionists object to such uses of these photos? Is there no way they can be seen or shown that may be of value, that may redeem the victims?
“In short, Nazi photographs were used to expose Nazi brutality when the actual Nazi state was threatening the world. Viewing them was not a form of “collusion” but its opposite: an attempt to spur outrage and action against the killers. Why, then, should the Nazi vision be considered impenetrable now? Why should we twenty-first-century viewers, sitting in comparative comfort in New York, Berlin, or Paris, be more intimidated by the Nazi worldview than were those who organized resistance in the cellars of Warsaw, the mountains of France, or the streets of Stalingrad? Why can we not see through these photographs and regard them as revelations, rather than fortifications, of fascist values? Why can we not view these images actively and critically rather than in mute, stupid obedience? (p72)”
She observes that many of the victims themselves published books in the post-war years using Nazi produced imagery, suggesting that if the victims want us to look at such photographs, why are critics insisting we should not? She admits that some people viewing these images may have the “wrong” reactions, but then asks - what is the proper reaction?
The Nazis aimed to destroy the victims prior to their deaths, primarily by eradicating the bonds of self-respect, empathy, and mutual dependence that make civilization possible if not always good.... What is a normal, natural, or appropriate reaction to this? (p76)”
A more extreme group of rejectionists argue that even resistance-made photographs, all Holocaust photographs, betray the victims, even if made by the victims to liberate themselves. “...these critics raise a larger, vital issue: is there any way to depict the negation of the human that does not trivialize the victims’ experience or inflict “an injustice,” as Adorno charged, on them? (p87)” Here on could see “the childish extremism that photographs evoke: the insistence that if they can’t tell us everything, they must tell us nothing, and that if they can’t reveal full truths, they must be lies.”
Linfield recounts the experience of a Holocaust survivor(Jorge Sempurun) as he came across newsreel footage of the liberation of the very camp in which he had been interned. Those images helped him understand that what he had experienced was really real, not some horrid nightmare. At the same time, the events became externalized, part of the world’s history, and not something that only he carried.
“Every work that documents the Holocaust, or even addresses it, is flawed and faulty and woefully incomplete; all representations pale, for obvious reasons, before the reality they seek to depict. But that does mean they are all worthless insults. Sometimes images restore the real—or deepen our understanding of it—as they did for Jorge Semprun. To look is not to desecrate, much less to kill. (p94)”
A second group Linfield identifies is the transcendentalists, on whom she spends only a few paragraphs. It is not clear if this is because there are so few of them, or she thinks so little of them. Or perhaps both. They imagine that through looking the viewer can redeem the victim’s suffering. She cites one writer who images one of the victims as a granddaughter, and another who sees nobility in expression of love under the most horrific conditions.
Linfield concludes by arguing that there is no easy way to look at or understand these pictures (which is perhaps why they generate such debate), She notes, though, that looking is important because they are a challenge to the totalitarian program of secrecy and depersonalization. They also invite us to consider the impossible, for which there is no _reasonable_ response. “By offering us glimpses of a reality we can neither turn away from nor grasp, photographs teach us that we will never master the past. They teach us about human limits and human failures. (p98)”
It is also important to look because so many of the victims went to heroic lengths to ask us to look, because they felt it was important for us to look. “It is not that the dead have nothing to tell us, show us, teach us; it is that we have trouble listening, seeing, learning. (p99)”
Chapter 4: From Malraux’s Dignity to the Red Guards’ Shame
The focus here is on images of the shaming rituals in China’s Cultural Revolution, which Linfield sees as secular expressions of the religious search for purity. Once again she notes that while photos from this period can tell us quite a lot, they require contextualization to be properly understood. She admits to bearing her own shame for having supported the CR as a young college undergrad. Unlike those taken by the Nazis, these images were intended for public consumption. They were propaganda intended to instruct, rouse, and intimidate. She doesn’t much discuss, though, how these images are to be viewed, or how Chinese currently deal with these images. The questions asked of the Holocaust photos could be asked here: Is it appropriate to look at these photos today? For what reasons?
Chapter 5: Beyond the Sorrow and the Pity
How do we understand images of violence against children, or images of children as perpetrators of violence? The subject here is the civil wars of Sierre Leone in the 1990s. Linfield observes that children are typically seen as worthy of protection, even among people who disagree about everything else.
Images of cruelty to children typically provoke strong reactions. Linfield argues that pity is a form of hatred and disregard for the pitied. Anger on the other hand may be directed at the image, the photographer, or the victim, when none of these is to blame for the situation which led to the image. She suggests anger can also be directed at what the images do not show and that at this point the two critical positions merge: pictures of child cruelty show too much and not enough.
She goes on at length about the powerful propaganda uses of images of children. “...such images are perfect conduits for manipulation, vulgar simplification, and propaganda. This is why, as David Rieff once noted, “the one thing tyrants and aid workers have in common is their liking for being posed next to children.” Because photographs of children can so easily weaken the viewer’s
capacity to form considered judgments, they are the perfect vehicle for nurturing simple-minded solutions and thoughtless vengeance rather than political wisdom. (p131)”
She argues that to look at such photos requires being embedded in the world, to understanding how these images came to be. “...our responsibility toward Memuna [a victim in one photograph over which Linfield dwells] does not stop at feeling shocked or disgusted by her mutilation. Solidarity with Memuna means to place her disfigurement within a larger reality to which we are connected, and to remain invested—politically, financially, ethically—in the fate of her country, without sugarcoating the depravity into which it descended or the difficulties it faces in creating a decent- enough future. This kind of solidarity—partial and inglorious—does not develop within the photograph, regardless of how long or hard we look: it depends on our immersion in the world outside the frame. (pp147-48)”
Chapter 6: The Dance of Civilizations
How do we look at the torture and execution videos coming out of the Middle East? “These forms of savagery are neither mere images nor mere actions, but are designed to be both: they are propaganda of the spectacle and of the deed. The aim is one of mutual loathing and mutual fear; we are bound to the hated “other” through the symbols and realities of thanatos. (pp152-53)”
Following publication of the Abu Ghraib photos, a debate ensued in the American press speculating on their cause, with one side blaming govt corruption, the other the corruption of the culture, in which violence was a frequent theme or topic of entertainment. Linfield argues that those who typically seek to limit certain kinds of pop culture products do not object to the content itself but to its widespread availability, and points out that those objecting to the hedonistic quality of pop culture (eg, the jihadis) are themselves the producers of some of the most gruesomely photographed violence. “My point is not to defend “our” violence, evidenced by the Abu Ghraib photographs, as less brutal than “theirs,” but to caution against blaming the too-easy, always- available devil of pop culture when explaining a catastrophe like Abu Ghraib. (p156)”
In his 2008 book on the AG photos, Standard Operating Procedure, Gourevitch’s investigation revealed the photos didn’t tell the whole story. “... he finds, not surprisingly, that the photographs do not speak for themselves. Some of the most shocking pictures depicted some of the relatively less-horrible actions; some of the most brutal images received relatively little attention; some of the worst tortures weren’t photographed at all. And some of the biggest crimes—in particular, the murder of a suspect named Manadel al-Jamadi—were overshadowed by the chilling sight of the young soldiers gloating and joking. (p157)”
He demonstrates how we project our own stories onto images while at the same time ignoring stories that may be more important and finds that it’s not just the photos that are incomplete. “What Standard Operating Procedure reveals is not that photographs offer incomplete understandings but that all sources—including eyewitness accounts and participant testimonies—offer incomplete understandings. “Does inadequacy not characterize all that we make use of to perceive and describe the world?” Georges Didi- Huberman has asked. “Are the signs of language not just as ‘inadequate,’ albeit differently, as are images?” Those questions were directed at the skeptics of the Auschwitz photographs, but they could just as well be directed at the skeptics of the Abu Ghraib photographs. (p159)”
Yet the very existence of the photos put the lie to the idea that there is no truth at all in photos. “And this is because people know—even after forty years of postmodern theory and two decades of Photoshop—that photographs record something that happened. The Abu Ghraib images shocked the public, and scared the government, precisely because they were photographs; they could not be spun, denied, or explained away, and though they could be interpreted in various ways, they could not be made to mean anything at all. The images evoked intuitive, visceral disgust in millions of people throughout the world; this was not an entirely informed reaction, but it wasn’t a wrong one, either. The Abu Ghraib images—digital images, taken by amateurs—have
strengthened, not undermined, the status of photographs as documents of the real. No written account of the tortures could have made such an impact. (p160)”
Of the execution videos, Linfield identifies two types: documentary footage from war zones, and custom made propaganda videos of executions and suicide bombings. “The former group of images is meant to establish Muslims as the world’s greatest victims; the latter, as the world’s greatest warriors. (p162)”
The issue first raised with the Holocaust images is apparent again: should such videos be watched? In watching them is one colluding with the perpetrator? Or is it necessary to view them in order to understand the ferocity of evil, the depravity of the enemy? Linfield notes that for both the assumption is that there is only one proper response to such images. “This attempt to dictate viewers’ responses reflects the intense anxiety such videos evoke even among those who urge watching them. The anxiety is understandable, yet the effort to control reeks of sanctimony. Younger viewers are, I think, far more honest about the shameful lure of forbidden violence and their impure reactions to it.” One young writer speaks of the thrill of watching something forbidden, safe in the knowledge there are no wider repercussions, another of “masochistic lust.” Linfield herself calls for probing honesty: “Watching these death-films demands scrupulously honest responses rather than moralism; and it requires, subsequently, the ability to scrutinize those responses while knowing that they might lead to ignoble truths. (p167)”
On govt use - or prohibition - of such images to control or incite their populations, Linfield damns the extremes: “The U.S. media shields us, far too much, from the bodily reality of the wars we are fighting (and war is, first and last, a bodily truth). The Arab press, conversely, bathes its viewers in the kind of feverishly lurid violence that the Frankfurt critics so rightly feared: in this case the “image- idea” truly does drive away thought, just as Kracauer warned. Each approach precludes the development of analytic abilities, historic understandings, and political maturity at precisely the time they are so desperately needed. (pp170-71)”
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