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Imagination, Invisibility and Hyper-Visibility

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Peace Photography

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

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Abstract

This Chapter, I compare Dorothea Lange’s historical photography of internal migration in the United States with Richard Mosse’s recent photography of international migration in search of a photography that triggers either compassion or solidarity. Methodologically, I introduce appropriation as a method in visual peace research that increases the researcher’s autonomy vis-à-vis the artwork and the artist. Furthermore, I note that the limits of photography are not the limits of visual culture.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shawn Michelle Smith , At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), p. 2.

  2. 2.

    Walter Benjamin , ‘Kleine Geschichte der Photographie’, in Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Drei Studien zur Kunstsoziologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1963), p. 47 (‘Der Nebel, der über den Anfängen der Photographie liegt…’).

  3. 3.

    Hanna Rose Shell, Hide and Seek: Camouflage , Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2012), p. 14.

  4. 4.

    Smith, At the Edge of Sight, p. 14.

  5. 5.

    Andrew Motion, Peace Talks (London: Faber & Faber, 2015), p. 85.

  6. 6.

    Simon Norfolk , ‘Ascension Island: The Panopticon (ECHELON for Beginners)’, at http://www.simonnorfolk.com/archive (accessed July 14, 2018).

  7. 7.

    Trevor Paglen , ‘Images of the Everywhere War’, Aperture, 209 (Winter 2012), pp. 78–79.

  8. 8.

    David Campany ‘What on Earth? Photography’s Alien Landscapes’, Aperture, 211 (Summer 2013), p. 51.

  9. 9.

    Trevor Paglen , Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes (New York: Aperture, 2010), p. 145.

  10. 10.

    Thomas Keenan , ‘Disappearances : The Photographs of Trevor Paglen ’, Aperture, 191 (Summer 2008), p. 38.

  11. 11.

    Robert Jervis , ‘Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma’, World Politics, Vol. 30 (1978), No. 2, pp. 167–214. The term is misleading because a dilemma offers only equally unfavourable options to deal with it. Jervis, however, recommends cooperation as a possible way to ameliorate security dynamics that ultimately result in less security for all.

  12. 12.

    Paglen, Invisible, p. 151.

  13. 13.

    See Liam Kennedy, ‘“Follow the Americans”: Philip Jones Griffith ’s Vietnam War Trilogy’, 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. 53.

  14. 14.

    Frank Möller, Visual Peace: Images , Spectatorship and the Politics of Violence (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 151–155.

  15. 15.

    British Journal of Photography , Vol. 163 (2016), No. 7851 (unseen: Meet the photographers putting a human face to the migration crisis).

  16. 16.

    For some such challenges, see note above.

  17. 17.

    The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Vol. 2, p. 1429.

  18. 18.

    Ben Curtis , in Errol Morris , Believing Is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography) (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 194.

  19. 19.

    Caitlin Patrick, ‘Ruins and Traces: Exhibiting Conflict in Guy Tillim’s Leopold and Mobutu’, in The Violence of the Image, p. 240.

  20. 20.

    David Campany explains that ‘it is not clear exactly when Lange’s photograph was titled Migrant Mother , but it was not circulated under that name by the RA or FSA , or the publications to which it was initially supplied’. See Campany, ‘The Migrant Mother ’, in A. Pardo (ed.) with J. Golbach, Dorothea Lange : Politics of Seeing (Munich, London, and New York: Prestel, 2018), p. 23.

  21. 21.

    Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 62.

  22. 22.

    See the discussion in ibid., pp. 53–67.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., p. 325, note 8 (both quotations).

  24. 24.

    Campany , ‘The Migrant Mother ’, p. 25.

  25. 25.

    For current standards regulating photojournalistic work, see David Campbell , ‘Securing the Credibility of Photojournalism: New Rules from World Press Photo’, Lensculture, 2015, at https://www.lensculture.com/articles/david-campbell-securing-the-credibility-of-photojournalism-new-rules-from-world-press-photo (accessed June 19, 2018).

  26. 26.

    One of Lange’s colleagues in the FSA , Arthur Rothstein , had even moved a cow skull from one location to another in order to make his pictures appear more dramatic. See the discussion in Morris, Believing Is Seeing, pp. 123–138.

  27. 27.

    Five negatives are kept in the Library of Congress, two in the Oakland Museum of California. See Alona Pardo (ed.) with Jilke Golbach, Dorothea Lange : Politics of Seeing (Munich, London, and New York: Prestel, 2018), p. 100.

  28. 28.

    Robert Coles, untitled essay, in Dorothea Lange , Photographs of a Lifetime. With an Essay by Robert Coles. Afterword by Therese Heyman (New York: Aperture, 1982), p. 20.

  29. 29.

    Quoted in Hariman and Lucaites, No Caption Needed, p. 62.

  30. 30.

    Abigail Solomon-Godeau , Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices, Foreword by Linda Nochlin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 176.

  31. 31.

    Laura Cumming, ‘Dorothea Lange : Politics of Seeing Review—A Visionary Whose Camera Never Lied’, The Guardian , June 17, 2018, at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/17/dorothea-lange-politics-of-seeing-barbican-review (accessed June 18, 2018). Because Lange was employed by the US government, the copyright of her photograph was ‘in the public domain from the start’ thus permitting ‘reproduction free of charge’. See Campany , ‘The Migrant Mother ’, p. 25.

  32. 32.

    Ibid., p. 22.

  33. 33.

    Jay Prosser , Light in the Dark Room: Photography and Loss (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 90.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    See Brian Wallis, ‘Recovering the Mexican Suitcase’, in C. Young (ed.), The Mexican Suitcase: The Rediscovered Spanish Civil War Negatives of Capa , Chim, and Taro. Volume 1: The History (New York: International Center of Photography/Göttingen: Steidl, 2010), p. 13.

  36. 36.

    Solomon-Godeau , Photography at the Dock, pp. 178–179.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., p. 179.

  38. 38.

    See Simon Dell , ‘Mediation and Immediacy: The Press, the Popular Front in France, and the Spanish Civil War’, in The Mexican Suitcase, p. 46.

  39. 39.

    James Johnson , ‘“The Arithmetic of Compassion”: Rethinking the Politics of Photography’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41 (2011), No. 3, p. 622.

  40. 40.

    Note that Alfredo Jaar , quoted in Chapter 6, recommended visual focus on an individual human being as strategy with which to create, among other things, solidarity . However, by showing only the eyes of an individual, Jaar’s approach seems to be in accordance with the mode of representation suggested in the present chapter, namely, one capitalising on some degree of obscurity in order to trick viewers into engagement with social, political and economic structures.

  41. 41.

    Johnson, ‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’, p. 625.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 626. The desire to see someone’s suffering remedied ‘is amplified because I imagine that her particular suffering, or something quite like it, might actually befall me’.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., p. 627.

  44. 44.

    Ibid., p. 626.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., p. 640.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., p. 642.

  47. 47.

    See Chapter 10 for elaboration.

  48. 48.

    Johnson, ‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’, p. 639.

  49. 49.

    Ibid.

  50. 50.

    John Berger , ‘Photographs of Agony’, in L. Wells (ed.), The Photography Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 290.

  51. 51.

    See Brian Walsh and TIME PHOTO, ‘Alan Kurdi ’s Story: Behind the Most Heartbreaking Photo of 2015’, TIME, September 29, 2015, at http://time.com/4162306/alan-kurdi-syria-drowned-boy-refugee-crisis (accessed June 19, 2018).

  52. 52.

    Incoming was on show at Barbican Curve, London, from February 15 to April 23, 2017, and Heat Maps was on show at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York City, from February 2 to March 11, 2017. The following discussion is based exclusively on Heat Maps.

  53. 53.

    Tom Seymour, ‘Richard Mosse —Incoming’, British Journal of Photography , published online February 15, 2017, at http://www.bjp-online.com/2017/02/mosse (accessed June 21, 2018).

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    Richard Mosse , ‘Transmigrations of the Souls: An Essay by Richard Mosse for Incoming, published by MACK, with an accompanying text by Giorgio Agamben (2017)’, Handout, Jack Shainman Gallery, 2017, p. 2.

  56. 56.

    Ibid.

  57. 57.

    Frank Möller, ‘The Looking/Not Looking Dilemma’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 35 (2009), No. 4, p. 788.

  58. 58.

    For the quote, see http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/appropriation (accessed October 6, 2017).

  59. 59.

    Indeed, that the subjects depicted can hardly be identified justifies, in the photographer’s opinion, his visual intrusion in the privacy of the subjects depicted who were not, and could not be, aware of their picture being taken.

  60. 60.

    Johnson, ‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’, p. 639.

  61. 61.

    On partially fragmented figures, see Zenon W. Pylyshyn, Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think (Cambridge, MA and London: A Bradford Book/MIT Press, 2003), 76–82.

  62. 62.

    Wolfgang Sofsky, Privacy: A Manifesto, trans. S. Rendall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 12.

  63. 63.

    Frank Möller, Rune Saugmann, and Rasmus Bellmer, ‘Migration, Heat Maps, and the Myth of Privacy’, International Journal for Arts and Politics, Vol. 1 (2018), No. 1, pp. 81–82.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., p. 86.

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

    Frank Möller

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Möller, F. (2019). Imagination, Invisibility and Hyper-Visibility. In: Peace Photography. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03222-7_9

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