John Berger wrote an essay which caught my eye, titled, “Photographs of Agony”.  This takes me back to my youth and watching news stories filled with the Vietnam War and the so called ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Berger writes of a photograph of a man with a child cradled in his arms, both are bleeding.

Vietnam del Nord-Hue , Don McCullin, 1968

Specifically, he asks why such photographs appear in the press, his suggestion that either the press recognise a demand for the truth from their readers or alternatively that, “that these newspapers believe that their readers have become inured to violent images and so now compete in terms of ever more violent sensationalism.” before dismissing both of these ideas as firstly too idealistic and secondly too cynical. (Berger, 1980, pp. 41–42) I think the truth must lie somewhere between these two poles. Continued exposure to shocking imagery of violence, death and suffering, I believe, desensitises us. Is the picture of a famine as shocking as the first time any of us saw such a scene? There is also a matter of context. The image showing a famine, seems far away, both physically and in terms of the comfort and security of western lives. That famine, it seems, happens to others and never to us. It is seen on the television or in a newspaper but is not experienced first-hand. An image which brings the problems of faraway to a location familiar to us has the power to re-introduce the power to shock the viewer. So, an image of a suicide bomb in London or Madrid or the image of a dead child on shores of Greece are shocking because of the context. The city which might be known to us or a European beach where some might have holidayed are places seemingly far removed from war and famine and suffering.

Berger goes on in another essay, “Uses of Photography”, to provide a response to Susan Sontag’s book “On Photography”. He quotes Sontag, “a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stencilled  off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.” (Berger, 1980, p. 54, from Sontag, 1979, p. 154)  Berger tells us that photographs do not preserve meaning. Interestingly he say that this is unlike memory. (Berger, 1980, p. 55) I am not sure that I agree with this. His use of the word ‘meaning’ seems to imply a kind of truth. Photographs do preserve a certain kind of truth, once we accept the limitations of what is shown in a two-dimensional image. The event captured by the camera did happen in some form. However, the photographic image is not the same as the actual event. The meaning behind a photograph can be open to interpretation but then so can what we see with our own eyes. Then if we remove what has been seen directly one stage and try to recall the event, it is open to change through time, through pollution of the memory caused by other related events, or by disease or simply by misremembering.

Berger goes on and talks of violence. Of the still image being torn from the original context of which that image was a part. He speaks that the image seized by camera as an act of violence. The group or individual who view the photograph, whether by an audience with knowledge of the subject of the photographic capture or not, might respond to the violence of the capture of that still image in different ways which might be expressed as “incredulousness” or “strangeness”.  “The total stranger might take any meaning or make any use from the photograph, “because the photographs carry no certain meaning in themselves, because they are like images in the memory of a total stranger, that they lend themselves to any use.” (Berger, 1980, pp. 55–57) This reminds me of the idea of photographs of the lost. Images I can buy where I know nothing about the subject or their story. These images lend themselves to my use and in return I create a new story for these images. One other thing occurs to me. All photographs will likely be lost forever or might fall into the hands of strangers who can make any use of these images or indeed can make no use of them. In that sense, our photographs and memories are identical, in that both will surely vanish. Our physical body and our memories vanish into ash or into the sea or the ground and after time passes there is nothing left. We might have told some of our stories to other people but they too will die and soon our stories vanish just the same as the photographic image fades and the paper rots or the memory card corrupts.

This is a key concept of my project. It isn’t just giving back a face to a medical scan, or in how I think of death or loss or remembrance, it is giving a new story to a new audience. Well at least for a short time.

References

Berger, J. (1980) About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books.

Sontag, S. (1979) On Photography. London: Penguin Books.