Reinhardt's focus is on the aesthetic of the images. Right off, he brings about questions of the possibility for the overpowering of aestheticism and what aesthetics really means. Because there was not a specific definition of "aesthetic" brought to the reading (Reinhardt states that it can be as narrow as beautification for pleasure and as open as sensory perception) and because the definition can encompass almost two complete opposite ideas, it seemed to me that the rest of his argument here seemed sort of arbitrary.
Since I have strong opinions that contradict Reinhardt's, I'll start with laying out some of what he said. He posed the problem that it is possible that a photograph's aestheticism may lessen the response of the viewer to the actual event within the image (and these images he is talking about are images of suffering). He uses the photographs from the prisoner abuse at Abu Graib as his first example of people's reactions to what photographs may show (not so much talking about aestheticism here, but more so how people respond to images of suffering alone). When these photos of torture were taken, they were not exactly to give people an update and documentary evidence of what is going on in the war and how it's happening, but they were being used as a secondary torture device: to exploit these people being tortured by showing the world their naked bodies being dragged, tied, or electrocuted, and sometimes even showing their faces to verify their identities to the world. These are not documentary, photojournalistic wartime photographs; they are methods of torture and bring up the questions 'Does our viewing of these photographs tell us anything or make us feel anything? Or do they just prolong the suffering of the individuals in the images? Are we making ourselves more knowledgeable of their situation, or are we simply adding to their humiliation?' For me, it was more of a moral debate about if I should view them to be informed (because they are events that, no matter how horrible, did happen), even if it prolongs the suffering of those pictured. I still do not have an answer to this, but I'm not sure there is a straightforward, no strings attached way to come to a conclusion about it. What I found interesting about others' views on the matter was the media's decisions of whether to show it or not, and their reasons for doing so. Some journals and newspapers said that the photographs were indecent for public eye because of nudity, and some showed the photographs but blurred the nudity, appearing to make these images more "socially acceptable". However, the faces of those in the images were not blurred. Is it not indecent to show the faces of those tortured and to reveal their identities to the world? And is the focus on respect more heavily weighed toward the viewers' emotions and sensitivity than to the subjects' sufferings?
Another part of this discussion that caught my attention was that there have been no photographs shown of dead or dying American soldiers. Based off of what Reinhardt stated about the "exotic" status of some of the dead Iraqis, it would seem that there is a social hierarchy in media, showing viewers that the most respect is granted to those nearest to us (Americans, and probably westerner's in general), and that as we get further away from our home, and into this "exotic" land, the people there are not as important and do not deserve our respect, so we will therefore have no qualms about showing straight photographs of Middle Easterners lying dead in a ditch (at this point, it seems that it would not matter the side that the dead were fighting for, but the fact that they are part of this misunderstood, exotic place, that they can be exploited openly). In this argument, it seems that the photographs sort of become unimportant. If the media is already determining what we as the public will find horrifying or gruesome and unacceptable to show on the nightly news, then does it matter what the images show? The photographs are not the ones giving us our emotional reactions at this point, it is the stories that we are told, the words that we hear, and the mental images we concoct.
So what happens when we do focus on the photographs and specifically what they show to us? Benjamin says that aesthetics show even the worst poverty as an object of enjoyment and spectacle. I completely disagree. Maybe it's because I'm a photographer and understand the formal qualities of an image and how they work into the aesthetic (that if the formality of an image is terrible, there will be hardly any aesthetic because the two go hand in hand), but I feel that if an image is aesthetically pleasing, I will be even more focused on the subject and the action taking place within the photograph. I will not be busy worrying about how I cannot see what his happening in the shadows because of poorly thought out lighting and I will not be anxious over the fingers and toes cut off on the framing. If it is aesthetically pleasing, my senses will be at a happy subconscious equilibrium, leaving the rest of my conscious thought to analyze and break down the subject's predicament/suffering. Again, maybe this is because I am a photographer and know of these formal qualities, but this was difficult for me to read because it seems that if people can look at a photograph of a starved, dying, skeletal man crawling across a dirt ground and only think "Look at how the framing lets you see into the distance and how the diffused lighting really softens up the look of the image, and how the man's limbs create great leading lines, etc", then we have lost faith in humanity. I guess I am slightly lost in how this debate can even arise, that aesthetics can diffuse how somebody views suffering. But, this is just how I have responded to reading this article of Reinhardt's, and we'll now move forward.
Reinhardt does bring up a few more examples of images by James Nachtwey and Sebastiao Salgado, as well as a few other photographers, and begins to sort of counteract what he had been talking about in relation to Benjamin's claim of the aesthetic. Reinhardt poses the fact that there can be an acknowledgment of the aesthetic qualities, but that they don't rid the image of its meaning. That with aestheticism in an image, the technical aspect is removed and the viewer is then focused on their sensibility toward the image. Or maybe that it's not dealing with the aesthetic at all, but the fact that it is a photograph. That it is a document of something that really happened (or according to Azoulay, is currently happening). Reinhardt then mentions Sontag's views in "On Photography" and how there may come to be a monotony in viewing so many images of pain and suffering. To this, Allan Sekula suggests that we use text to break this routine way of viewing a photograph and moving onward with our lives. Sekula believes that by adding text, we may be able to view these photographs more so as a documentation and be taken a step back from the absorption of the images, read the text, and then create a relation to what we have read with what we see. Alfredo Jaar attempts to do just that with his "The Eyes of Gutete Emerita" where he displays a minute and a half of text, and then just a flash of an image. His intentions are to get people to stand in front of the piece longer, to really let it sink in, and to be intrigued by the quick flash of the image. Potentially, this may be a way to break that "pornography" of viewing images, but this almost seems to me to be less about the image and less about photography as it is about the creation of mental imagery and a connection to a story (i.e. journalism, not photography). However, having not seen the exhibition of this piece in person, I cannot make a claim to how this piece verifies itself.
The next part that Reinhardt delves into is the aesthetic in relation to two photographs about September 11, 2001. The first photograph is from Joel Meyerowitz, depicting the clean up efforts at Ground Zero (though showing no people) and showing it in such a way with the dust and smoke rising up into the bright sky with almost a painterly effect. The second photograph is one by Thomas Ruff, who, although he did not take the photograph, appropriated an image of the burning twin towers, then blew the image up to quite a large size and increased the size of the pixels as well. Reinhardt's argument dealing with the aesthetic here is that because of the pleasing aesthetic in Meyerowitz's image, it doesn't make the viewer think. It doesn't bring about this revelation of pain and suffering that he believes one would get out of viewing Ruff's image. Here, he believes that the image demands attention and illudes to people being in the buildings currently, suffering and burning, and that as a viewer we would have a stronger response to this image that would not be considered aesthetic, with its elephant sized pixels. Though I can see where he's coming from, I would have to disagree yet again. Maybe if one is looking at these images without any prior knowledge of 9/11, they may see the images this way, unaware that Meyerowitz's photograph shows hundreds of uncovered bodies, some dead, some alive, and that Ruff's image would appear as a real-time photograph of people being burned in these smoking buildings. But in a comparison of the two photographs and with prior knowledge taken into account, I feel that Meyerowitz's photograph of the smoking Ground Zero may bring about the same, if not more, response in relation to the suffering of those people knowing that thousands of tons of metal and concrete (being shown hosed down) are burying 2500 people.
The last part of viewing photographs that Reinhardt talks about is the acknowledgment. He says that when viewing images of people, there needs to be a call for acknowledgment. This would mean that there doesn't have to be an explanation of the image and what is going on, but that the subject is showing the viewer what his happening, and through this connection between the subject and viewer, there is acknowledgment. Without this acknowledgment, without this call for relation between the subject and audience, the image has failed. If there is no connection reaching out to the viewer, there is a lack of the meaning of the image coming through in the understanding of the photograph by the viewer. This, in essence, is what Azoulay looks for in photographs.
This essay by Azoulay is a prerequisite to last week's reading on The Civil Contract of Photography, and is a more upfront, simplified "starter" to what she delves into in The Civil Contract. Azoulay starts out by saying that when a photograph is taken (and here she is talking mostly of Gillian Laub's photographs), the attention to detail and objects and framing within the image create this acknowledgment between the subject and viewer. That with these little clues of the subject's life, we can relate in some way or another, and we can get to know the subject through the interaction between these details, and through the interaction between the subject and the photographer (how the picture was taken. This can be seen in a lot of Zwelethu Mthethwa's work and Fazal Sheikh's work, shown below). With this understanding that we are all a part of the human condition, and that we all suffer and want to reach out to somebody and share with them what we are feeling, we begin to realize and relate to each other in ways different than those bounded by our social/geographical/religious rulings. When we break "sides" and show that we are all human, this connection is made even stronger and the borders of the photographs seem to dissolve until we are standing next to this person and understanding their pain. This is acknowledgment that Reinhardt was talking about, but Azoulay takes it that step further to look past the photograph as an object and to view the people just as that: people.
I really enjoy Azoulay's understanding of the human condition and the way we should look at photographs to acknowledge and watch the people within them in a neutral ground, especially in comparison to the way Reinhardt views acknowledgment in the more simple terms of a recognition, or a fleeting response. In the diagram below, I have attempted to visualize how these two analyze the ways in which viewers come to acknowledge the subject of a photograph.
Zwelethu Mthethwa:
Fazal Sheikh:
*I'd like to apologize for 1) how opinionated I feel this blog post was. The Reinhardt article made me quite frustrated. and 2) some of my ideas where not fully expressed. I took notes as I read and then went back to search the document for some of the key words, but the Reinhardt document didn't recognize the pdf as having text and I was not able to find some of the points in the article to help articulate my discussion. Sorry guys!
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