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| Figure 1. Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters |
A dozen or so police officers are aiming at the bodies on the ground. Another dozen are looking around for perhaps more people out in the desolate desert. On August 16, 2012, Marikana, South Africa was shocked as miners in an informal strike were struck down by the police, leading to at least 30 people dead (Figure 1). Initially, the miners were wielding machetes in the photographs, but closer investigation reveals that officials edited the scene, moving the weapons closer to their bodies in an attempt to justify their actions on the strikers. The question is, are we shocked about the murders, or by the manipulation of what is considered to be the truth?
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| Figure 2. European PressPhoto Agency |
There
is a certain numbness that overshadows a person when looking at these
photographs. This is a scene that looks awfully familiar to all of us. In Susan
Sontag’s book On Photography, this
may happen because the “ those images had become banal, and the photographs of…
families dying… that appeared in magazines everywhere in 1973 must have seemed
to many like an unbearable replay of a now familiar atrocity exhibition” (14). Sontag’s
On Photography was written in 1977,
in an era where the internet and cell phones didn’t exist, but the words still
ring the same. In an era where we have access to photos on almost every event,
it’s hard to avoid pictures of suffering, and it’s so easy to get used to the
suffering we see as pictures.
Susan Sontag states in Regarding the Pain of Others that “The memory of war, however, like
all memory, is mostly local” (29). What we see in this photo is a mob of police
defeating an informal group, which makes the police heroes, but this single
slice of a memory cannot explain all that has happened. Only the witnesses and
the police know what really occurred. On the extreme case, we may never know
what actually happened because the scene was manipulated. The photograph’s true
meaning (which in this case is about a platinum mine strike) “depends on how
the picture is identified or misidentified; that is, on words” (Regarding 25). We can
only say there was a wildcat (informal) strike at a platinum mine and the
police retaliated. And yet, there was basically no coverage of such a disaster
in the United States of such an atrocity. The recent terrorist attack at the
Boston Marathon overtook all the media for a few days, beginning with the
bombing and ending with the manhunt. There were 3 people killed which pales in
comparison to the shock that occurred in Marikana. The Boston marathon bombing
is a grim reminder to the United States of not only of how fragile the human
is, but also how nonchalant we are when others are suffering.
In this blog, I want to investigate
the trends of tragedies that occur in different countries around the globe
using Susan Sontag’s On Photography and
Regarding the Pain of Others as
points of texts to build my argument about the pain victims feel and how we, as
a different culture far away from the atrocity, feels.
“To photograph is to appropriate
the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the
world that feels like knowledge – and, therefore, like power” (On Photography, 2). Going back to the Marikana Platinum Mines massacre, what the
photographer didn’t just take a photo of the triumphant police; it also robbed
the victims of their own voice. The altered photo shows a struggle, maybe even
a battle between the strikers and the police.
But as the days went by, the photo was shown to be tampered, altering
the voice of the dead to the police’s own liking. “A photograph…is judged a
fake when it turns out to be deceiving the viewer about the scene it purports
to depict” (Regarding 38). It is
really discouraging when the only photos you can find are deemed fake. But at a same time, this particular picture
tells of a different story than what is revealed on the photograph. This
cover-up shows the deeper hopelessness, the inequality the citizens face, where
the government backs up the police who back up the interests of the corrupt.
But perhaps we as American don’t act on things like this because our exposure
to the rest of the world is clouded by what is happening in front of us, where
the steps to a better future are being squandered by the same thing in South
Africa: corruption.
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| Figure 3. Politics is a bloody affair. Asif Hassan/ Getty Images |
On May 11 this year, a landmark election took place
in Pakistani, where it is transitioning from a one democratically elected
government to another, an unprecedented feat that also stirred up some trouble.
In an article describing the event, there was a whole section dedicated to the
bombings that took place during this election. However, there are hardly any
photos of the deaths on the article at the time, and the report of the bombings are dry,
unlike the Boston Marathon scare. This signals a motion that the deaths weren’t
the biggest part that happened at Pakistan, but rather the election that can
lead to better lives is. This news outlet put up one picture of the destruction
of the explosions in order to focus on the revolutionary event. This election
may also complement the photos of the grim gatherings of people mourning,
showing that the tragedy that occurred wasn’t in vain. The citizens are
fighting for a democracy.
Even though there is victory of voting in a war zone,
the photographs of tragedies are also a big point to come across. The absurdity
of the atrocity should prompt action. This photo shows the destruction
Pakistanis have to deal with on a daily basis. There were 3 explosions that
have occurred during this election, which took the lives of 14 people and
injuring many others. We as readers on the internet, however, do not understand
the pain felt by those who see their family members in body bags. “The images
that mobilize conscience are always linked to a given historical situation. The
more general they are, the less likely they are to be effective.” (On Photography, 12). Not only does the
photo bring out a vague, uncomfortable longing to try fit in their shoes, the
short articles about the bombings barely put life into the coverage, only
showing the facts and statistics. “A photograph that brings news of some
unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in public opinion unless there is
an appropriate context of feeling and attitude,” (On Photography 12). Because other places (like Pakistan) are so
far and foreign to us, we just never understand, so we only write down what is
real to us, which are the stats.
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| Figure 4. Boston Marathon Bombings. John Tlumack/Getty Images |
And yet, these photographs of suffering do their job
of reaching out to place we may never imagine going: “they are attempts to
contact or lay claim to another reality,” (On
Photography 12). This foreign
place, where suffering is so banal, is so different from our own comforts.
Because of the norm of living without a terrorist attack, the Boston Marathon
bombings (Figure 5) were quite the changeup to daily life in America. With a highly
integrated social media connecting millions of people, people can be informed
of the atrocity that happened at the finish line that day. The endless photos
by witnesses certainly affirm that there are people who are angered by the
disruption happening at a peaceful gathering. “Photographs cannot create a
moral position… they can reinforce one” (On
Photography 14) and that is to not mess with America. This indignation
towards the culprit is contributed by “the demands…made on reality in the era
of the camera,” (Regarding 50),
where the fetishism towards a “truth” is ever more growing. The man
in the red shirt comforting the victim clearly shows the sadness and confusion
that really stirs the heart. This, combined with the attack on what should have
been a great day for everyone, combines for lots of coverage on the news channels
and the internet.
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| Figure 5. Courtesy of Mvemba Phezo Dizolele |
So where is the coverage of the cruelty around the world?
The pictures produced from examining mines in Africa shows the struggle the
country faces. The conflict usually occurs in developing countries such as the
Congo, where mining is used as an excuse to abuse rights of many to profit the
corrupt. One such picture depicts a boy hammering the earth to find coltan,
used for cell phones and other electronic products. “Uglifying, showing
something at its worst, is a more modern function: didactic, it invites an
active response” (Regarding 64). Clearly,
child labor is wrong and that boy should be learning in school. But do we get a
sense of urgency as we scream in horror of seeing abuse? Mostly not. Susan
Sontag questions, “Does shock have term limits?” (Regarding, 64). If this was the first photo of child labor, there
might be a sign of concern. However, because of our overexposure to the media
and the internet, we pass it off as if it was no big deal and we do nothing
about it, buying smartphones and minding our own business. We become numb to
these things. “As one can become habituated to horror in real life, one can
become habituated to the horror of certain images” (Regarding 65). We have become too used to the images that occur on
a daily basis, or we shy our eyes away from the pain and ignore the human
factor in how some consumer products are made. Since the smartphone is right in
front of us, and the child working isn't we don’t get a sense of concern. Because
of this distance between the consumers and our desire to be connected with
everyone else, we and “Photographs…turn an event or person into something that
can be possessed,” (Regarding 64). We have possessed the child worker and squished him into these tiny
amounts of coltan, effectively not recognizing the poor workers.
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| Figure 6. Courtesy of Mvemba Phezo Dizolele |
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| Figure 7. Pakistani men react next to the body of a relative who was killed in a bomb blast, in Karachi. AP |
“The more remote or exotic the place, the more likely
we are to have full frontal views of the dead and dying” (Regarding 56). Even though we tend to shy away from the foreign
pictures that we can’t truly believe or don’t even care about the blood coltan,
it doesn’t make us into heartless humans. The photograph is a thin veil between
reality we see with our own eyes and the reality that was sliced out of time. While
we can’t assume the lifestyle these people had before looking at the body of a
loved one, we can’t help but think that the exposure of death in photographs
can’t prepare anyone for the shock of reality. As those 2 boys in black cry at
the extinguished life in front (Figure 7), it shows how fragile and human we are. Because
memory of war that is local can only touch those that are local, we on the
western side of the world wouldn't understand the pain and the shock value on
the eastern side. Comparing the red shirted guy crying over a loved one to the
kids crying over the dead man, there is no difference in of what they feel as
pain. Transforming the local sense into a feeling of empathy, these people
would understand what it feels like to lose a life. It is a hard concept to
understand because until tragedy strikes, you really don’t know how to react,
so it makes sense that deaths in other parts of the world can’t quite strike a
chord with many people. That may be a reason why the nightly news briefly goes
over the deaths in a foreign country: it can’t stir up what little
understanding people have of the situation there. However, these photographs “show
a suffering that is outrageous, unjust, and should be repaired. They confirm
that this is the sort of thing which happens in that place,” (Regarding 56). Although we may not understand the gravity of
the situation, we must acknowledge that there is wrongdoing and we should do something about it.
It’s hard to understand the tragedy some people face
when we’re across the globe, much less across the country. The Boston Marathon
bombings are hard for me to understand. But the MIT shootings had a much bigger
impact on me because it was local in the sense that my friends attend school
there. In the same way, if there was a connection between us in the United
States and those who are suffering on the other side of the world, the numbness
we feel in photographs would melt. 
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