For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a big fan of Communication Arts‘ annual issue of the best photograph’s of the year. For some reason, I’ve found myself missing the deadline to submission my own shots every year. I’ve come to accept it as annual ritual. I get the notice in the mail and email. I make a mental note to submit. Then I never remember until the day after the deadline has passed.
Like clockwork. Every. Year.
Yesterday, I finally caught up enough with my work after 6 months of travel. I gave myself an hour of relaxation for a cup of tea and the 51st edition of the annual exercise of archiving the year’s best photography. While there are some wonderful shots every year that help push my imagination forward, I could help but wonder if the term “photography” has been sullied a little in this day and age of digital image manipulation (but this is a subject of a whole new post someday).
I’ve also had to question CA’s selections for the editorial category. Increasingly over the last few years, I’ve noticed that gory photographs from foreign disaster zones have been occupying a lot of spreads in this section of the annual. Seemingly, the images have been getting grittier and less abashed about the content they display. I am particularly disturbed by the objectification of the lifeless body. In that context, CA, to me doesn’t differ greatly from Kampala’s vulture rags that pass for newspapers. Respect for the dead is not a concept they even embrace. The deader the body, the more newspapers it’ll sell. So it’s not surprising to see fully naked, lifeless bodies as the leading image on the front page.
Personally, I can’t seem to shake the fact that I have a problem with this. Respect for the dead is one of the purest expressions of humanity. That for however someone lived or died, in passing, they would be accorded some due send off. Perhaps in recognition that we all cease to breath at one point or another. With that sobering reality, it always seems grotesquely celebratory and opportunistic when I see the dead paraded like circus animals.
Part of the reason I am so disappointed with CA’s almost self-congralutory publication of
the dead and maimed in Haiti’s earthquake aftermath is that I have this healthy respect with how Americans treat their own dead on national television. You would never see images of an uncovered dead body at a murder scene during a newscast or the morning paper. Bodies are generally rolled out or depicted in body bags. I suppose there isn’t any way around affirming that people died in whatever catastrophe that made the news that day. This is the American way that is in contrast with East African media.
So when I come across images from foreign disasters of dead children and naked women being thrown into coffins, burning bodies and body parts – chosen and celebrated as great photographs – I cringe in disappointment. I suppose it is that contrast of what I see as America’s valuation of an American life versus that of foreign life. It comes off as objectification of everyone else as too foreign to deserve the same respect in death as afforded by an American. Is this apparent to everyone or am I just being too sensitive on the issue. I know as a photographer, I would never subject my SD card and my lens to capturing images of the dead. Now, it is fair to state that I’ve never come across a situation where I had to make the decision to shoot or not. The closest I’ve come was the Kampala bombings a few months ago. Even then, I remember telling myself that I’d not be that photographer. I deliberately did not rush out to the crime scenes to shoot any images because of this. I suspect that plenty of photographers did just that on that fateful night in Kampala. I struggle with this, I really do.
From an historical point of view, perhaps I understand that these tragic events in human history need to be recorded and archived, but I don’t see why they should be celebrated in this manner. I am of the view that if you wouldn’t publish an image of your mother’s naked and mutilated body lying in the street, then why it is ok for you to objectify someone else’s? Why is it OK for CA to publish these images from Haiti as great editorial work? Does “editorial” all of a sudden mean that the rules don’t apply? Everything is fair play?
Anyway, perhaps I am alone in this and this is a complete non-issue. But it sure as hell seems wrong. But I can’t help but wonder if this is the manifestation of American fears that images of America’s dead upsets the carefully crafted image of the American way of life in contrast to the rest of the world. “Everything is chaos everywhere in the world, look these images. Nothing like that happens here in the land of the red, white, and blue.” Surely, CA can’t be that naive and shallow. Can it?