Abstract
Gormley and Allan focus on several pertinent theoretical contributions made by Ariella Azoulay that invite a radical rethinking of familiar assumptions regarding human rights photography. Having established a conceptual basis, they proceed to analyse several examples of photojournalists attempting to ‘activate’ viewers by inviting them to co-create photographic narratives via methods of hypertext and online archival interaction, and of International Non Governmental Organisations (INGOs) working to create projects which ‘speak’ to viewers by involving the children they seek to represent in the production of photography. It is argued that in taking up Azoulay’s call to rethink public relationships to human rights imagery, these projects represent progressive steps towards addressing the multifarious inequalities at stake. At the same time, however, realising this potential depends on making good the promise of rendering visible the normative ideals of human rights.
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Notes
- 1.
Imagery takes the place of the word ‘photography’ here to account for the wealth of technological devices now available to make images of humanitarian situations.
- 2.
Further creative examples of contemporary human rights imagery can be found in examples such as UNHCR’s current Dream Diaries project, whereby refugee children who have found asylum in Europe shared their aspirations and dreams with producers. The dream diaries are an eclectic mix of digitally constructed photographs created by the production team and intended to show each individual’s dreams for the future. For example, 14-year-old Manaal, from Somalia, is shown staring up to sky whilst sitting on the wing of an aeroplane, the caption beneath explains that she hopes to be an air stewardess one day. Another shows 15-year-old Amr, from Syria, pasted into ‘Breaking News’ on television screens, reflecting his hope to be a reporter. The project was intended by UNHCR to engage viewers in new ways by evoking their creative imagination.
- 3.
‘The overall project is thus Rousseauian and post-structuralist, and like many a Rousseauian post-structuralist before her, Azoulay overplays her hand. The utopian and vaguely anarchistic desire for an intimate community from which power and humiliation have been banished is likely unsatisfiable, even in fantasy. Certainly it appears well beyond what anyone could reasonably expect either photography or contractarianism to deliver’ (Costelloe 2010, p. 182).
- 4.
It also resonates with Robert’s discussion of the perpetual relationship between photography and capitalist reproduction remaining dominant in Azoulay’s citizenry of photography. ‘The civil part of Azoulay’s version of the social ontology of photographs contract is asked to do far more than the actual class actors producing the photographs—those actants preened in the photo and those looking at the photos—can actually do. Thus it is a recognition that the social ontology of the photograph is as it was in its origins caught up in the machinery of capitalist reproduction’ (Roberts 2014, p. 19).
- 5.
‘[T]he final difficulty is that the civil contract of photography will seem idealistic—that is, too much at odds with the realities of state power and the fact that human rights still depend on protections provided by state citizenship’ (Harriman and Lucaites 2016, p. 188).
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Gormley, A., Allan, S. (2019). Re-imagining Human Rights Photography: Ariella Azoulay’s Intervention. In: Shaw, I.S., Selvarajah, S. (eds) Reporting Human Rights, Conflicts, and Peacebuilding. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10719-2_13
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