Cynics and Citizens

Both articles reveal the atrocities human kind has bestowed upon its fellow members. Susan Sontag remarks on the fact that the photographer’s intentions are irrelevant to the larger process. From all that Sontag has stated this is the phrase that I feel is most relevant to both her argument as well as Ariella Azoulay. It refers to the belief that even if the photographer does care for the future and present nature of the subject that through his personal capture of it, the fact remains, anyone who sees this representation of the subject will undoubtedly construct his or her own meaning. It does not, however, leave the photographer out of the message entirely. Azoulay discusses how even an image with a title telling the sitter exactly what is infront of them is not all there. Instead of looking at an image and simply accepting that which we are hearing or reading as evidence of what is presented we must “watch” the image, and in a way try to grasp what is given to us as a whole. 

Though Azoulay is discussing her point from a woman who has experiences the atrocities of the intifada with which we are unfamiliar. We may have been introduced to this historical point in the past and have read about it for this week’s blog but yet we still don’t know anything because we are spectators and have only been given a one-sided viewpoint. This is what the power of photography has. Azoulay describes in a way that a photographer, the photograph itself, its subject and its audience is a complete, unbiased community of unknowing citizens with each other. That through this art everyone and everything is united. They all have the same laws; there is not one subject that inevitably gets more perks than another. In the beginning Azoulay connects her understanding of instances she has not seen by what others have told her (i.e. when her mother told her that they don’t go to the beach on Fridays because that’s when the “clothed Arabs” are there.) Azoulay understands this as people swimming, uneasily and awkwardly, in the water wearing all their clothes. This is a point that Sontag discusses entirely through her passage that without these images telling us what is happening in the world we don’t fully understand anything. Even though we are only given a single view of what is happening with a photo we are still able to see the people, the colors, the atmosphere they are experiencing that cannot be explained in writing as influentially. 

Even though we are given the examples of the atrocities that are occurring around the world, we can see them and we can hear them on the TV, but we are still not there. The images are in our environments, yet we are separated by the fact that it is represented in a tiny format, a TV or a newspaper; something that we all notify as fictions. Jeff Wall’s image of Dead Troops Talking is a grand example of reiterating the fact that things are occurring. This large format print, if it were a believable situation of history, could in turn be the next stage of morbid presentation, a form of arena that gives people a personal perspective that is of realistic size. This is an issue Sontag states, at the start of her writings, that we as humans are constantly needing more and more to reiterate how to personify death as a atrocious habit. We don’t want to see continuous messages, but rather newer and more illustrative images and stories. For this reason I have come to believe that it is in fact not Sontag’s “reexamination” on her previous beliefs that photographs pose a neutral affect on us, but in a way a continuation of that fact adding further implements on the subject as well as opposing sides. This also is a part of Sontag’s relation to presentation of the images from the wall to books to newspaper and TV. No matter with what format in which we engage these images we still come to an end and tend to get loose the images when we leave gallery or close the book. Though for an instance we were “semi-a part” of this life we had just seen, but we get back into our own reality and continue along our own paths. Also the format of presentation gives the viewer a form of realism of the work. Work presented in the Fine Art realm seems staged and fictitious where as in a newspaper it can seem more realistic and informative. Nonetheless both are a part of our lives and as accurate as they will ever be: both can only be as informative as the viewer will allow.

The image of Hebron by Anat Saragusti as Azoulay presents is a portrait of a man whose show was broken into by government troops. One key feature most people affiliate with photography is that it exists in the past, what is being shown has already happened and over. But Azoulay expresses that this is not the case. That when dealing with a photograph is the subject not existing today, or at least in the minds of others. When we look at an image from previous times we are not only seeing what has happened but a glimpse of what can happen, even if it doesn’t it would still be a possibility. When confronted by this image of Hebron we see, literally, a man holding a broken lock. Plainly speaking this image is meaningless, but when one looks into the image as Azoulay wishes us to do, watching it rather, they are given the context and message that is present. We need to not only see an image as just that but also look for what else is there. Try to put ourselves into that occurrence and understand what they are going through. If the media has been good for one thing it is that they have taken away a sense of imagination by giving us, continuously throughout each and every day, their interpretation of subjects with no need to examine alternative perspectives.