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Memory, Truth and Justice: On Forensic Photography

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Peace Photography

Part of the book series: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies ((RCS))

Abstract

This chapter, concluding part 2, I discuss forensic photography—by definition aftermath photography—in what is probably the book’s most experimental chapter, drawing from literary sources as much as from photographic ones. Forensic photography, I argue, is an important ingredient of the criminal justice system, serving as visual evidence unaffected by the vicissitudes of human memory. In the context of forced disappearances, it has a support function for families and loved ones of the disappeared and it is a visual plea against forgetting. Forensic photography addresses the criminal justice system, the relatives of the disappeared and a wider audience. It reappears the disappeared in viewers’ imagination and increases the number of those knowledgeable of the policy, history and presence of forced disappearance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Alex Danchev, On Art and War and Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 41.

  2. 2.

    Mia Couto, The Last Flight of the Flamingo, trans. D. Brookshaw (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2004), p. 170.

  3. 3.

    Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka, trans. F. Wynne (New York: Black Cat, 2010), p. 236.

  4. 4.

    Gervasio Sánchez has dedicated his book desaparecidos—disappeared (Barcelona: Blume, 2011) among others ‘to all the disappeared and to their families for continuing to fight for years and decades for truth, memory and justice’ (p. 27). On pages 44 and 45 of the book, there is a Sánchez photograph taken in the Parque de la Memoria in Buenos Aires. Viewers see the following inscription: MEMORIA VERDAD JUSTICIA, hence Sánchez’ dedication, hence, too, the title of this chapter.

  5. 5.

    Primo Levi , The Drowned and the Saved, trans. R. Rosenthal (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 83.

  6. 6.

    Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 149.

  7. 7.

    Bernardo Kucinski , K, trans. S. Branford, with drawings by Enio Squeff (London: Latin American Bureau 2013), p. 169.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 76.

  9. 9.

    Tropicália: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound, booklet (London: Soul Jazz Productions, 2005), p. 11. Tom Zé, who provided the answer in the quotation, also had the following to say: ‘And what’s the best way of destroying a people? Give them the power, then show the corruption – which is happening now and it’s destroying Brazilian government top to bottom’. Zé made this prescient statement in 2005 with reference to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva!

  10. 10.

    See Diane Dufour (ed.), Images of Conviction: The Construction of Visual Evidence (Paris: LE BAL and Éditions Xavier Barral, 2015).

  11. 11.

    Gervasio Sánchez, Antología/Anthology (Barcelona: Blume, 2012), p. 192.

  12. 12.

    Michael Ondaatje , Anil’s Ghost (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), Author’s Note (front matter).

  13. 13.

    Peter Weiss , Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2005), p. 1193 (my translation).

  14. 14.

    Ed Vulliamy , ‘Bringing Up the Bodies in Bosnia ’, Guardian, December 6, 2016, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/06/bringing-up-the-bodies-bosnia (accessed December 8, 2016).

  15. 15.

    Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, p. 278.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., p. 184.

  17. 17.

    Figueras, Kamchatka, p. 11.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., p. 257.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., pp. 286–287.

  20. 20.

    Danchev , On Art and War and Terror, p. 71.

  21. 21.

    Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, p. 56.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 5.

  23. 23.

    Kucinski, K , p. 14.

  24. 24.

    Joseph McGonagle , ‘Dispelling the Myth of Invisibility : Photography and the Algerian Civil War’, in L. Kennedy and C. Patrick (eds.), The Violence of the Image: Photography and International Conflict (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), p. 86.

  25. 25.

    Vulliamy , ‘Bringing Up the Bodies in Bosnia ’, continues by explaining that ‘At one point, Islamic spiritual authorities decreed it irreligious to bury less than 40% of a body, further exacerbating the trauma for those believers trying to deal with fragments’.

  26. 26.

    Kucinski, K, p. 152.

  27. 27.

    Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost, pp. 55–56.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., p. 307.

  29. 29.

    John Roberts , Photography and Its Violations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 112.

  30. 30.

    Vulliamy , ‘Bringing Up the Bodies in Bosnia ’.

  31. 31.

    See http://www.bledayrosa.com/index.php?/proyectos/campos-de-batalla (accessed May 7, 2018).

  32. 32.

    Abigail Solomon-Godeau , Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic Histories, Institutions, and Practices, Foreword by Linda Nochlin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 176 and Mieke Bal , ‘The Pain of Images’, in M. Reinhardt , H. Edwards, and E. Duganne (eds.), Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (Williamsburg and Chicago: Williams College Museum of Art and The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 95.

  33. 33.

    Photographer Trevor Paglen makes a similar argument with regard to the construction of secret military airplanes. Such airplanes may be invisible but the factories where they are assembled are not; thus, they can be photographed. See Paglen, quoted in Jonah Weiner, ‘Prying Eyes: Trevor Paglen Makes Art Out of Government Secrets’, The New Yorker, October 22, 2012, p. 60.

  34. 34.

    Sean O’Hagan , ‘Seeing Is Believing: Documentary Photography from Francis Bacon to 9/11’, The Guardian , September 28, 2016, at http://www.theguardian.clom/artanddesign/2016/sep/28/photography-and-meaning-in-the-digital-age-from-911-to-fake-crime-scenes (accessed September 28, 2016). Norfolk’s is an art photograph but also a documentary one, evoking ‘the immeasurable human suffering that took place on this ordinary-looking site’.

  35. 35.

    See David Simpson, 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 14.

  36. 36.

    The International Commission on Missing Persons speaks about 3400 disappearances during the military dictatorship in Chile from 1973 to 1980. See http://www.icmp.int/where-we-work/the-americas/latin-america-and-the-caribbean (accessed April 26, 2018). While the establishment of the overall number of disappearances is important, it also makes identification with individual victims difficult—the more so, the more victims there are.

  37. 37.

    João Pina , Condor (Lisbon: Edições tinta-da-china, 2014).

  38. 38.

    Fred Ritchin , Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen (New York: Aperture, 2013), p. 129.

  39. 39.

    Sánchez, desaparecidos, p. 18.

  40. 40.

    Gervasio Sánchez, Víctimas del olvido/Forgotten Victims (Barcelona: Blume, 2011).

  41. 41.

    Diana Taylor , The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 164. For a fascinating discussion of 25 years of performance protest with photography involving grandmothers, mothers and children of the disappeared, see ibid., pp. 169–189.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 175.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., p. 176.

  44. 44.

    McGonagle, ‘Dispelling the Myth of Invisibility ’, pp. 86–87.

  45. 45.

    Susan Sontag , Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), p. 89.

  46. 46.

    Rosa Matos Bento , Liner notes to Maria João and Mário Laginha, Danças (Verve, 1993).

  47. 47.

    Figueras, Kamchatka, pp. 304–305.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., p. 257.

  49. 49.

    Roland Barthes , Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. R. Howard (London: Vintage, 2000), p. 96.

  50. 50.

    Paul Lowe , ‘The Forensic Turn: Bearing Witness and the “Thingness” of the Photograph’, in The Violence of the Image, p. 213 (all quotations).

  51. 51.

    Taylor , The Archive and the Repertoire, p. 186.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., p. 178. Here, visibility would seem to be limited and appeal to onlookers’ pre-existing awareness of the earlier, more visible practice of displaying placards with photographs. Visibility does not seem to be necessary anymore because the ‘goal now is less to give evidence to the existence of the missing than to denounce the politics of impunity’ (p. 186). As long as human rights violations have not been punished, they have not ended (p. 165) which reminds me of Tom Zé’s answer, quoted above, to the question of when the dictatorship (in Brazil ) had ended.

  53. 53.

    Lowe, ‘The Forensic Turn’, pp. 226–227. For the photographs, see Ziyah Gafic , Quest for Identity (Millbrook, NY: de.Mo Design, 2015). For selected photographs, see also https://medium.com/@karenfranceseng/the-relics-of-genocide-b632159bf3c (accessed July 10, 2018).

  54. 54.

    Lowe, ‘The Forensic Turn’, p. 218.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 230.

  56. 56.

    Tate Britain, Press Release, April 25, 2018, at http://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-release/turner-prize-2018-shortlist-announced (accessed April 30, 2018).

  57. 57.

    Ajay Heble, Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance and Critical Practice (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), p. 78.

  58. 58.

    Adrian Searle, ‘Turner Prize 2018: Art That Asks Timely, Probing Questions’, Guardian , April 26, 2018, at https://www.guardian.com/artanddesign/2018/apr/26/turner-prize-2018-shortlisted-artists-timely-probing-questions (accessed April 30, 2018).

  59. 59.

    See Nicholas Mirzoeff , The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011).

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  1. Tampere Peace Research Institute, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Frank Möller

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Möller, F. (2019). Memory, Truth and Justice: On Forensic Photography. In: Peace Photography. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03222-7_7

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