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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Photographs of human suffering inundate everyday life in the United States. The camera lens brings the human gaze into the intimate anguish of state sponsored torture and “natural disaster.” This essay argues that photographs of suffering in contemporary culture present a nexus of ethical and moral issues. These issues arise from how photographs represent suffering “others” and how these images inform collective response to human anguish. This essay interrogates this intersection through the lens of Christian ethics' root metaphor of imago Dei. First, the essay explores the power and privilege that are invisible in the act of gazing upon a photograph of human suffering. Second, Kevin Carter's 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a Sudanese girl-child is deconstructed through the use of visual cultural studies. This analysis illustrates that photographs are not a literal depiction of suffering but rather a cultural representation which deeply condition the knowledge of human suffering. Finally, the essay argues that the photo is an invitation for the viewer to become an agent, not a spectator whose morality is realized in the sociality of imago Dei in suffering.
1 Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman, Joan, “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times,” in Social Suffering, ed. Kleinman, Arthur, Das, Veena and Lock, Margaret (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 1Google Scholar; Sontag's, SusanRegarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003).Google Scholar
2 Chopp, Rebecca, The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Political Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982), 2.Google Scholar
3 One example of this commodification is the Benetton Company's use of images of suffering to market clothing. See Nash, Nathaniel, “Benetton Touches a Nerve and Germans Protest,” The New York Times, February 3, 1995, D1, D18.Google Scholar
4 There are many examples of photos of suffering which have transitioned from documentation to artwork and to “emblems of suffering.” One example is Robert Capa's falling soldier; see Sontag, , Regarding the Pain of Others, 119–26.Google Scholar See also Spelman, Elizabeth, “On the Aesthetic Usability of Suffering” in Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 133–56Google Scholar; Goldberg, Vicki, “Looking at the Poor in a Gilded Frame,” New York Times, April 9, 1995, sec. 2: 1, 39.Google Scholar
5 Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 1.Google Scholar
6 I am indebted to Susan Ross for her thought-provoking work on the theological value of ambiguity. She writes: “When a situation is marked by ambiguity, its resolution is unclear: there is more than one possible solution, more than one meaning. It is often marked by tension, as competing resolutions are suggested by those involved. In between order and chaos, ambiguity demands further reflection, consideration of new and different outcomes, decisions on what issues are at stake in it resolution…. But such a situation means that those involved must be able to tolerate, at least for a time, a certain ‘lack’ of order. This ‘disorder’ allows for dimensions of the situation to reveal themselves, or to be uncovered by questioning, opening up issues and concerns that could affect the situations resolution” (Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology [New York: Continuum, 1998], 69).
7 See Rose, Gillian, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage Publications, 2001), 167Google Scholar: “The institutional uses of photography makes us think photographs are truthful pictures, not photographic techniques themselves…. Foucault's emphasis on institutions and power/knowledge is crucial for understanding the belief that photography pictures the real.”
8 This limited space does not allow for a full catalog of this valuable work. However, such a list would include Rose, , Visual Methodologies; Evan, Jessica and Hall, Stuart, eds. Visual Culture: The Reader (London: Sage Publications, 1999)Google Scholar; Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London; Sage Publications, 1997)Google Scholar; Heywood, Ian and Sandywell, Barry, eds. Interpreting Visual Culture: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual (New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Plate, S. Brent ed., Religion, Art and Visual Culture: A Cross Cultural Reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002)Google Scholar; Taylor, John, Body Horror: Photo Journalism, Catastrophe and War (New York: New York University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Zelizer, Barbie, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Gross, Larry, Katz, John Stuart and Ruby, Jay eds., Image Ethics in the Digital Age (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).Google Scholar
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10 Gattegno, Caleb, Towards a Visual Culture: Educating through Television (New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1969).Google Scholar
11 “To talk of the medium of television is a way to talk of man (sic) as the perceiver, the responder, the expander, the processor of images” (Gattengo, , Towards a Visual Culture, 15).Google Scholar For an extended work on human beings as processors of images see Gregory, Richard, Eye and Brain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
12 For a and excellent and thorough exploration of gaze as complex sense and brain process in producing mental image see Barry, Ann Marie Sward, Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 15–68.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., 15 (“map”), 67 (“visual intelligence”).
14 Ibid., 66.
15 Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 88.Google Scholar
16 Szorenyi, Anna, “Distanced Suffering: Photographed Suffering and the Construction of White In/vulnerability,” Social Semiotics 19 (2009): 93–109, at 94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Since the terms “spectator” and “spectacle” signal a discussion that is beyond the scope of this article, I will limit my use of the terms. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright define spectacle as “a term that generally refers to something that is striking or impressive in its visual display.” These scholars point out that a spectacle will “dominate contemporary culture and all social relations are mediated by and through these images” (Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001], 366 [my emphasis]). The term “spectacle” was employed in a specific way in 1967 in Debord's, Guy seminal work, Society of the Spectacle (trans. Nickolson-Smith, Donald [New York: Zone Books, 1994]).Google Scholar Stuart Hall's work brilliantly uses this concept to interrogate the dynamics of racist cultural representation; see Hall, Stuart, “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’” in Representation, 223–90.Google Scholar To understand the dynamic of spectacle in relationship to current visual cultural studies, see Mitchell, W.J.T., What Do Pictures Want: The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).Google Scholar For a fascinating introduction to this issue, see Gross, Larry, “Privacy and Spectacle: The Reversible Panopticon and Media Saturated Society,” Image Ethics in the Digital Age, 95–113.Google Scholar “Spectacle” and “spectator” refer to social roles and processes of power. My use of these terms is limited in this essay to denote the powerful social role the viewer has in gazing upon an image of suffering and not having to act in relationship to this anguish. See also Chouliaraki, Lillie, The Spectatorship of Suffering (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006).Google Scholar
18 Gaze, is defined as “to look steadily, intently, and with fixed intention.” The American Heritage College Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 565.Google Scholar Within visual cultural studies, the term “gaze” is multifaceted and embedded in a rich and interdisciplinary body of literature including film theory, feminist theory, literary criticism and psychoanalytic thought. For the purposes of this essay I use the term to connote the power relationship of the one who looks. I draw upon Michel Foucault's idea that the gaze is not only something a person does, but is a relationship of power into which one enters through the mechanism of vision in society as a whole; see Foucault, Michel, “The Eye of Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Gordon, Colin (New York: Pantheon, 1980)Google Scholar; idem, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Vintage, 1979).Google Scholar For a clear overview of the ideas of gaze and power in visual cultural studies, see Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa, “Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge” in Practices of Looking, 72–108.Google Scholar
19 hooks, bell, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 115.Google Scholar
20 Ibid.
21 For more on the development of the practice of photojournalism as advocacy see Stomberg, John, “A Genealogy of Orthodox Documentary,” in Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, ed. Reinhardt, Mark, Edwards, Holly, and Dugganne, Erina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 37–56.Google Scholar
22 See further Scott, William, Documentary Expression in Thirties America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Agee, James and Evans, Walker, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941)Google Scholar; Bourke-White, Margaret, You Have Seen Their Faces (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937).Google Scholar
23 For historical background on this photograph, see Hariman, Robert and Lucaites, John Luis, No Caption Required: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 49–67.Google Scholar
24 “What Does the ‘New Deal’ Mean to This Mother and Her Child, San Francisco News, March 11, 1936, 3.
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26 Cohen, Stanley, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 168.Google Scholar One could argue that this is no longer true for Americans since 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. However, I believe that Cohen's thesis is still relevant because he demonstrates that the knowledge we have of mass suffering is mediated by layers of institutions, even within our own country. This was and is true of how the images of 9/11 mediated knowledge of suffering to people in the United States. See Sherman, Daniel and Nardin, Terry eds. Terror, Culture, Politics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 2001)Google Scholar; Davies, Merryl Wyn, “September 11: The Visual Disaster,” Third Text 15, no. 57 (Winter 2001–2002): 13–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Cohen, , States of Denial, 168.Google Scholar
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31 I want to thank Margie Pfeil for this insight; see her article, “The Transformative Power of the Periphery: Can a White U.S. Catholic Opt for the Poor?” in Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence, eds. Cassidy, Laurie and Mikulich, Alex (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 113.Google Scholar
32 Copeland, M. Shawn, “Foundations for Catholic Theology in an African American Context,” in Black and Catholic: The Challenge and Gift of Black Folk: Contributions of African American Experience and World View to Catholic Theology, ed. Phelps, Jamie T., Marquette Studies in Theology 5 (Milwaukee: WI: Marquette University Press, 1997), 112.Google ScholarCopeland, makes this same point in “The Exercise of Black Catholic Theology in the United States,” Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 3 (1996), 11.Google Scholar See also Griffin, Susan, “Pornography and Silence,” Made From This Earth: An Anthology of Writings by Susan Griffin (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 110–60Google Scholar; Rivers, Clarence Rufus J., “The Oral African American Tradition Versus the Ocular Western Tradition: The Spirit of Worship,” in Taking Down Our Harps, Black Catholics in the United States, ed. Hayes, Diana and Davis, Cyprian (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), 239.Google Scholar
33 Goldberg, David Theo, Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America (New York: Routlege, 1997), 80.Google Scholar For a profound treatment of how this dynamic of being “known” and invisible impacts the understanding of domestic violence against Black women see West, Traci, Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence and Resistance Ethics (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 57–59.Google Scholar
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37 Dikovitskaya, , Visual Culture, 1.Google Scholar
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 16.
40 Iris Marion Young identifies five specific forms of oppression which I believe are at work in visual representation; exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
41 Hall, Stuart, “The Spectacle of ‘The Other’” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices ed. Hall, Stuart (London: Sage Publications), 226.Google Scholar
42 See http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/Enlargement.aspx?id=0000295711–001&tab=details&caller=search. It is problematic that as a white North American social ethicist I will focus on a photograph from Africa to argue that representation inscribes racist power relations. Barbara Andolsen and Shawn Copeland have pointed out that North American Christian social ethicists and theologians often use examples in Africa rather than the United States to obfuscate their own involvement in white privilege. I join with this critique and intend my analysis to show how this representation is an expression of this obfuscation. This photo serves as a “spectacle of the other” which reveals the global implications of North American white privilege. See Frederickson, George, The Black Image in the White Mind (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1987)Google Scholar as well as bell hooks, Black Looks.
43 Lorch, Donatella, “Sudan Is Described as Trying to Placate the West,” The New York Times (March 26, 1993), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2D7123FF935A15750C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&&scp=2&sq=donatella%20lorch%20sudan&st=cseGoogle Scholar (accessed October 24, 2010).
44 Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others, 47.Google Scholar
45 Ibid., 26.
46 Ibid., 26–27.
47 Ibid., 26.
48 Ibid., 26.
49 Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 4.Google Scholar
50 Ibid.
51 Carter and three other white South Africans (Joao Sliva, Greg Marinovich and Ken Oosterboek) were on a mission to use photojournalism to expose the brutality of apartheid. The four men became so well known in the townships for capturing the violence of apartheid they became known as the “Bang-Bang Club.”
52 MacLeod, Scott, “The Life and Death of Kevin Carter,” Time 144:11, September 12, 1994, 70–73.Google Scholar
53 Ibid.
54 Keller, Bill, “Kevin Carter, a Pulitzer Winner For Sudan Photo, is Dead at 33,” The New York Times, July 29, 1994, B8.Google Scholar
55 Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 4.Google Scholar
56 In April 13, 1994 The New York Times ran a full-page advertisement in recognition of the three Pulitzer Prizes that it won in that year. In describing Carter's photo it read: “To The New York Times for Kevin Carter's photograph of a vulture perching near a little girl in the Sudan who had collapsed from hunger, a picture that became an icon of starvation” (cited in Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 5.Google Scholar
57 MacLeod, , “The Life and Death of Kevin Carter,” 73.Google Scholar
58 Harwood, Richard, “Moral Motives,” The Washington Post, November 21, 1994, A25.Google Scholar Using Carter as an example, Harwood explores the positive contribution of photo-journalists while also giving a nuanced picture of their ethical dilemmas.
59 MacLeod, , “The Life and Death of Kevin Carter,” 73.Google Scholar
60 Ibid.
61 Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal to Experience,” 7.Google Scholar
62 Ibid.
63 W.J.T. Mitchell as cited in Dikovitskaya, , Visual Culture, 16.Google Scholar
64 Shapiro, Michael, The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in Biography, Photography, and Policy Analysis (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), xii.Google Scholar
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67 Lorch, “Sudan Is Described as Trying to Placate the West.”
68 Ibid.
69 Dreze, Jean and Sen, Amartya, Hunger and Public Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dreze and Sen demonstrate the political causes of famine in sub-Saharan Africa.
70 Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 4.Google Scholar
71 Ibid., 7.
72 Ibid. See also Slatoff, Walter, The Look of Distance: Reflections on Suffering and Sympathy in Modern Literature—Auden to Agee, Whitman to Woolf (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
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74 Morris, David, “Voice, Genre, and Moral Community,” 38.Google Scholar
75 Desjarlais, Robert et al. , World Mental Health: Problems and Priorities in Low-Income Countries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).Google Scholar This volume demonstrates how the World Bank and International Monetary Fund impact post-Cold War global conditions which adversely effect health care and social policies in sub-Saharan Africa, especially for women.
76 Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman, Joan, “The Appeal of Experience,” 8.Google Scholar For another such example see the photo by Ruth Fremson of an unnamed Haitian woman, with the caption, “A woman in Fort Dimanche laying out biscuits to dry, biscuits made of butter, salt, water and dirt.” (emphasis my own) The New York Times (May 5, 2004), 1. I want to thank Anna Perkins, Ph.D. who commented that the perspective of the photo and caption's message implies that Caribbean peoples may be thought by Americans as destined to eat dirt.
77 Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman, Joan, “The Appeal of Experience,” 7.Google Scholar Emphasis in the text.
78 Ibid.
79 This term “racial knowledge” is from Goldberg, David, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993), 148–84.Google Scholar
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81 “Those thus rendered Other are sacrificed to the idealization, excluded from the being of personhood, from social benefits, and from political (self-)representation.” Goldberg, David, Racist Culture, 151.Google Scholar
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87 Lucien Richard explains that a root metaphor functions by disclosing the connection of different elements of an identity by its relatedness to reality as a whole, and specifically to Ultimate Reality. As a root metaphor the doctrine of imago Dei reveals the connection of God as Creator, the dignity and value of the human person, and the communitarian nature of the human vocation. See Richard, Lucien, “Toward a Renewed Theology of Creation: Implications for the Questions of Human Rights,” Eglise at Theologie 19 (1986): 149.Google Scholar
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103 See further the United States Catholic Bishops, Brothers and Sisters to Us: U.S. Bishops' Pastoral Letter on Racism in Our Day (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1979), 3:Google Scholar “Racism is a sin: a sin that divides the human family, blots out the image of God among specific members of that family, violates the fundamental dignity of those called to be children of the same Father.”
104 Kleinman and Kleinman, “The Appeal of Experience,” 1. For more on this notion of “Charitainment,” see Poniewozik, James, “The Year of Chaitainment,” Time Magazine, December 26, 2005, 93.Google Scholar
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113 Metz, Johann Baptist, A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity, trans. Ashley, J. Matthew (New York: Paulist, 1998), 66.Google Scholar
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119 Ashley, , Interruptions, 130.Google Scholar
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