Suffering in Photographs
Photographs are used to document history, however selected images are chosen to do so. Often times these images graphically show the cruelty of mankind. In her book, Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks, "What does it mean to protest suffering, as distinct from acknowledging it?" To acknowledge suffering is just to capture it, to point it out and show somebody else that it exists. In order to protest suffering, there has to be some sort of moral decision that what is shown in the photograph is wrong, and a want from the viewer to change that.
Sontag says that throughout history, things focused on in art and history tend to be the "product of wrath, divine or human." There is much art showing the suffering of Christ and the executions of Christian martyrs. These pictures are supposed to bring up emotion strong enough to make people have faith. "The viewer may commiserate with the sufferer's pain . . . feel admonished or inspired to model faith and fortitude." This is an example of protesting suffering. There are also many violent and disturbing things shown in the pagan myths. These are different because "no moral charge attaches to the
representation of these cruelties." So in that case, suffering is being acknowledged, but only to see if you can bare to look at it.
Sontag points out that it is much different to have a piece of art which shows a made up cruelty as apposed to a photograph which shows the close up of an actual person in the middle of a painful event. She says, "perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it." She is saying that unless we have a way to stop the sufferi...
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...he people. The boy on the porch has so much silent desperation, but also deeper understanding in his eyes than most kids his age. These photos weren't just presented with captions telling a date and place. They were instead accompanied by writings, which told the intimate details of their lives. This then creates an understanding in the viewer of the life and circumstances, which made the boy, look the way he does. Agee and Evans were not trying to get people to feel pity for the farmers, they were just telling the common story of strength and struggle which represents a group of people who were so far from famous.
Works Sited
James Agee and Walker Evans .Let us Now Praise Famous Men. The Riverside Press, 1960.
Sontag, Susan. Regarding The Pain Of Others, Picador, 2003.
Walker, Evans. Photographer: Boy on porch picture 33. Walker Evans Archive.
Having such an image before our eyes, often we fail to recognize the message it is trying to display from a certain point of view. Through Clark’s statement, it is evident that a photograph holds a graphic message, which mirrors the representation of our way of thinking with the world sights, which therefore engages other
Dyer, Richard. “At Work Again, he and John Williams Exalt in their Admiring of 24 Years.” Boston Globe 24 Feb. 1998: 4/13/99 http://www.multimania.com/spielbrg
of suffering is most beneficial. However, answering this question about suffering becomes increasingly more difficult with the
... middle of paper ... ... The two characters give a sense of despair by their appearances. Yet in the passage above, the reader is made aware that their immense agony is only for themselves and not for what they have done.
I glance amusedly at the photo placed before me. The bright and smiling faces of my family stare back me, their expressions depicting complete happiness. My mind drifted back to the events of the day that the photo was taken. It was Memorial Day and so, in the spirit of tradition my large extended family had gathered at the grave of my great grandparents. The day was hot and I had begged my mother to let me join my friends at the pool. However, my mother had refused. Inconsolable, I spent most of the day moping about sulkily. The time came for a group picture and so my grandmother arranged us all just so and then turned to me saying, "You'd better smile Emma or you'll look back at this and never forgive yourself." Eager to please and knowing she would never let it go if I didn't, I plastered on a dazzling smile. One might say a picture is worth a thousand words. However, who is to say they are the accurate or right words? During the 1930s, photographers were hired by the FSA to photograph the events of the Great Depression. These photographers used their images, posed or accurate, to sway public opinion concerning the era. Their work displayed an attempt to fulfill the need to document what was taking place and the desire to influence what needed to be done.
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Dorothea had spent a long day capturing images and she was going back to print the images when she had drove past a sign that said, “Pea Picker’s Camp.” Dorothea continued to drive thinking she had enough photographs she did not need anymore. Something struck her that she could not resist and eventually she turned around saying, “I was following instinct, not reason” (Partridge, Lange 2). She stopped at the worn down camp and was intrigued by a mother and her seven children. Dorothea took her camera over to them and no one asked any questions. She captured only six images of this mother and her youngest children. The woman had told Dorothea that the freezing rain and sleet had ruined the pea crop. They did not have any work and they had to sell tires for food (Partridge, Lange 3). Dorothea had no idea what those images would do for her career, but she knew she had to show the world what those people in “Pea Picker’s Camp” were going through.
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Georges Didi-Huberman is critical of the conventional approaches towards the study of art history. Didi-Huberman takes the view that art history is grounded in the primacy of knowledge, particularly in the vein of Kant, or what he calls a ‘spontaneous philosophy’. While art historians claim to be looking at images across the sweep of time, what they actually do might be described as a sort of forensics process, one in which they analyze, decode and deconstruct works of art in attempt to better understand the artist and purpose or expression. This paper will examine Didi-Huberman’s key claims in his book Confronting Images and apply his methodology to a still life painting by Juan Sánchez Cotán.
“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” was written by James Agee and Walker Evans. The story is about three white families of tenant farmers in rural Alabama. The photographs in the beginning have no captions or quotations. They are just images of three tenant farming families, their houses, and possessions. “The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative.” (87) The story and the photographs contain relationships between them; in the essay I am going to inform you about the interpretations of the relationships between the readings of James Agee and some of the pictures by Walker Evans.
[NOTE: BECAUSE OF CONCERN ABOUT RIGHTS, WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO POST THE IMAGES THIS ESSAY REFERS TO]
During the Holocaust, images displaying dead bodies, skinny defenseless people and kids trapped between fences demonstrate a shuddering feeling to the mind. An image reveals the Nazi soldiers, placing the prisoners in front of a ditch, and then executing them by shooting, making them fall into the hole as way to get rid of these imprisoned people (Ghouse, Huffington Post). The gory images causes people to feel emotional and saddened at the sight of the dead and how the prisoners were treated during the Holocaust. Images that explain these people’s surroundings display gunsmoke, blood, dead bodies, and heavy labor in these concentration camps. The aching of one’s heart as it drops to his stomach is all he can think about when he sees an image from the Holocaust that should not be described in
Having realized art as a structured cultural phenomenon, and having emptied its direct and apparent meaning, it is possible to identify all its possible significations. Interestingly enough, I find that art reveals many diametrically opposed significations: expression and oppression, bias and acceptance, individual and society, creativity and confinement, and freedom and convention, among others. Art signifies the de-politicization of our culture, for even the most political of pieces cease to cause a stir among the masses.
In their eyes, even though clearly victims, exist strengths and hopes for the future. The photos indicated that they could and did create their own culture, both in the past and present. From the same photos plus the texts, it could be gathered that they have done things to improve their lives, despite the many odds against them. The photographs showed their lives, their suffering, and their journey for better lives, their happy moments, and the places that were of importance to them. Despite the importance of the photographs, they were not as effective as the text in showing the African-American lives and how the things happening in them had affected them, more specifically their complex feelings.