Susan Sontag NY Times essay on photography and Abu Ghraib.

For those interested in the topic, or in reading Susan Sontag's

latest rumination on a kind of photography, here is a link to her

latest<a

href=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/23PRISONS.html?

pagewanted=print&position=> essay</a> in the New York Times. <br><p>

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<br><p>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/23PRISONS.html?

pagewanted=print&position=

The essay is long, but who am I to suggest that this oracular writer, who suggested we "had it coming" with 9/11, be edited for brevity?

 

To summarize: "America sucks. [insert 3,000 words here] America is a fascist state. Blah blah. [Another 2,500 words.] Abu Ghraib is like Rwanda. Blah Blah. Ruh Limbaugh is evil. Blah blah. Abu Ghraib is like a lynching. Blah Blah. America sucks.

Mani,<br>

Thanks for having the courage to bring up this subject. It has been interesting to see how it has been avoided to date on Photo.Net in spite of the the painful relevance. Sontag's essay is a thoughtful examination of the place of photography in modern times, apart from any political considerations. I think she sheds some light on a an interesting issue that I have not seen explored before. The images which have really impacted the world in regard to Iraq have been produced by amateurs wielding P&S cameras, not by professional journalists. First, the very sedate and respectful picture of the caskets of American soldiers, and now the pictures snapped and emailed around the world by the torturers of Abu Ghraib.

James, I've been searching with Google trying to find the article where Sontag said, "we had it coming", could you give me a pointer to it?

Did you actually have any thoughts on the torture photos or the issue of the government trying to suppress access to photos like these? Or did you just want to rant against Sontag?

 

I believe she has many valid points and she gone on to state them rather eloquently.

 

Why is it with so many Americans that at the first critique of their government/leaders they lock up and go into Super-Patriot mode?

 

Funny I thought the critique of government was something that was rather American. But it seems these days it's all been superceded by patriotic fervor and bravado - even in light of the absolute fiasco that the current government has embroiled itself in.

 

The spin doctors up on the hill are payed big bucks to very carefully chose the words and write the responses to questions put to people like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld - so I think the Sontag's issues with the wording that Rumsfeld used in response to the torture photos really does give a scary insight into the 'thinking' that the current administration is using when it comes to the issue of photographs of torture by American soldiers.

>James O'Gara , may 21, 2004; 10:41 p.m.

 

>The essay is long, but who am I to suggest that this oracular writer, who suggested we "had it coming" with 9/11, be edited for brevity?

 

Sounds like you should be edited for fabricating things that do not exist in the article. Then again, maybe you enjoy hiding things like the truth. Or maybe you just got a perverse pleasure from the prison pictures.

I don't think I read anything in this rather long winded article that I hadn't read many times previously during the past weeks. In that sense it's little more than a derivative summary of what other authors have published before. A little disappointing; I would have expected more original insights from a leading public intellectual.

Sontag does seem to demand a bit more patience to read than the average columnist. I've never been able to get all the way through <i>On Photography</i>. On the other hand, I don't see her repeating of some ideas as being a fault in the present essay. The value of it is as a synthesis of all the relevant facts and considerations backed by irrefutable logic, and as a clear-sighted testimony in a time of crisis.<br><br>How did this thread get stuck in W/NW?

That Sontag has picked up so many key elements of the concerns and criticisms of the issues surrounding these photos is harldy something to fault her for. I think it shows how prevalent many of these issues are at the moment and how germain these kinds of critiques are to the situation.

 

Whether or not she's easy to read seems a pathetic issue. So many have gotten used to a snippet and soundbite way of comprehending issues that they have difficulty to deal with the neccessary complexity involved in issues like torture, a war for oil foisted on the American public and all the rest of the current deep doo doo the President and gotten his country into.

 

Turn off the Fox news and CNN and learn to dig just a bit deeper on the issues. God forbid anyone (adult no less) should have to read more than 100 words. Sheesh.

Difficult to read? Turn off Fox and CNN? Cannot read beyond 100 words?

 

No, Lucas, on the contrary. What I said is that I had expected *more* from Sontag, as well as something beyond what I'd already read many times over.

 

Is that clear, now, Lucas? Or are you here just to shout and insult?

Oops.... I guess you might have been addressing another poster instead of me. My apologies, Lucas.

See http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?010924ta_talk_wtc - seventh article from the top, or http://web.utk.edu/~mfitzge1/docs/312/312f02/sontag.pdf (same article). Pithy and to the point. But still garbage. Let's stick to photography.

"<i>Pithy and to the point. But still garbage.</i>"<br><br>I'm having some trouble figuring out your point. Sontag's post-9/11 essay did seem a bit shocking and radical at the time, but my guess is a great many people find it much less so now. Of course, I also recognize that a large number of Americans continue to believe that a little bit of torture is ok. Sontag's point in the current essay is that that is the slippery slope. The current essay, btw, is about photography.

Registration required.

 

Wonder why they want to know how many children you have, to register.Think i'll pass.

Hm. Me, I have 74...

 

;-)

Mike - I was reponding to an earlier prompt for a link to an article where SS had written that America "had it coming" on 9/11. If you are having trouble figuring out my point, I am going to have trouble explaining it to you.

I read Sontag and found little to disagree with as far as general truths go. The only thing that bothered me was that Sontag's pomposity and self-conscious attempt to utter socio-aesthetic profundities often blocked her from getting at the deeper implications of what happened at Abu Ghraib. Because of this there are way too many platitudes mixed in with real insights. It is not a great essay; but it is a good enough essay for the real insights that is does offer.

 

One of Sontag's excellent insights is that victimizers seldom appear in photographs alongside their victims. One exception she mentioned was the public lynchings that took place in the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries. She does not mean that the tortures at Abu Ghraib were are bad as the lynchings. Her point is that the victimizers were confident enough to pose with their victims in both cases. Lynchings were public affairs, often advertised in advance. Photos of a lot of lynchings were made into post cards. None of the photographed seemed to fear that they would be arrested for murder. That tells you a lot about the state of official "justice." So it is, apparently, with Abu Ghraib.

 

There is a strong similarity between the poses of the lynch mobs and the soldiers taking part in the tortures at Abu Ghraib. In both cases you see people smiling relaxed, "say cheese" smiles. The sort of smiles you see at birthday parties. That is what is most shocking about lynching photographs. Those smiles posed next to hideous and illegal deaths. The smiles and goofy party poses is what shocks me most about the Abu Ghraib photographs.

 

There is just so much that you can say about the photographs themselves. They are "only snapshots," as the saying goes. They are not even good snapshots. The only reason we care about them is that they depict something horrid.

 

As more facts come to light it is become increasingly clear that what happened at Abu Ghraib was not a case of a few "bad apples" going too far. The torture was systematic and the problem is systemic. The Bush Administration's flaunting of international law no doubt allowed the tortures with the relaxed smiles and party time poses to think no one would care about what they did at Abu Ghraib. Yet, I suspect that problem goes beyond Iraq and Bush. If we Americans care about our country we owe it to ourselves as a people to uncover just how systemic the sickness that we saw at Abu Ghraib is.

Greg,<br>

In the post-9/11 essay, for which you have provided a link, Sontag did not say "America had it coming". She did point out that the terrorist attacks were entirely predictable given the world's perceptions of American arrogance, and she took politicians to task for the dimwit effort led by Bush to label the hijackers as "cowards". It is not self-evident, as you imply, that those ideas are "garbage".<br>    Over a period of several decades Sontag has devoted special attention to two topics. One of those is how political rhetoric distorts perceptions of reality. The other is how photography interacts with and shapes our society. In the interest of keeping the discussion on-topic for the purposes of this forum, here is a relevant quote from the current NY Times essay:<br><br><i>...There is the deep satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is now more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn't take a picture of them... </i><br><br>It seems to me that is a useful observation that contributes to an understanding of how the torture pictures came to be made and distributed. In reading that I was immediately reminded of a much older picture shot by Weegee (Arthur Fellig) which demonstrated the same phenomenon described by Sontag. In that long ago scene captured with Weegee's press camera a crowd of bystanders surrounds lifeguards who are trying to revive a drowned man. In the middle of the picture, the man's girlfriend kneels beside the victim and smiles broadly for the camera.<br>    As Bee Flowers pointed out, Sontag's essay is not very original in some respects, but I think it is nevertheless a useful and necessary reminder of how normal people can slip into aberrant behavior with just a little encouragement from the politicians.

<i>...Limbaugh's response: "Exactly!" he exclaimed. "Exactly my

point. This is no different than what happens at the Skull and

Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin peole's lives over it, and

we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going

to really hammer them because they had a good time." "They"

are the American soldiers, the torturers. And Limbaugh went on:

"You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking

about people having a good time, these people. You ever heard

of emotional release?"</i><p>

 

I wonder if Limbaugh would be saying the same thing if the

pictures were of American soldiers being stacked nude, hooded,

and held on a leash? Failure to recognize serious problems is

to risk one's own doom. This is false patriotism.<p>

 

<i>"... the quite justified invasion of Afghanistan..."</i> -

Sontag<p>Where do you find "America sucks" in that phrase?

Allow me to suggest that Sontag�s essay suffers less from platitudes and pomposity � though there is an abundance of both � than from a conspicuous but unsurprising failure to make vital distinctions, something that has been called moral relativism. A telling quote: �Looking at these photographs, you ask yourself, How can someone grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being? . . . And you feel naïve for asking, since the answer is, self-evidently, People do these things to other people.� Fair enough. But in her next breath she makes the inevitable (for her) comparison: �Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, have done and do them when they are told, or made to feel, that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be humiliated, tormented.� Translation: the Americans are no more immune to the cruelty bacillus than the Waffen SS and Saddam Hussein�s jailers.

 

Having written the foregoing, Sontag demonstrates a perverse obliviousness to the not insignificant detail that Americans do not, as a rule, butcher hundreds of thousands of men, women and children and deposit their corpses into mass graves, or run concentration camps for the purpose of eliminationist genocide, or stack the skulls of political undesirables a la the Khmer Rouge, or engage in any number of other atrocities that America�s diseased and violence-impregnated culture would presumably (again, per Sontag) deem �good entertainment, fun.� Or do they? Pity, for Sontag, that there are no photographs, yet. A conflation of the Nazi genocide program, Saddam-era torture and the actions of American soldiers at Abu Ghraib obliterates the line between sadistic abuse for �kicks� and sadistic abuse as a prelude or sidebar to mass murder. Speaking photographically, that is the equivalent of failing to distinguish gray from black. Speaking generally, that is the equivalent of moral myopia.

 

I anticipate responses that take me to task for misapprehending Sontag�s thesis and that argue that her essay did not intend to place the depredations of American soldiers on an equal footing with the acts of Nazi police battalions and Soviet Gulag sentries. I respectfully disagree. Photographs, especially photographs used as a political cudgel, are not to be viewed in an ahistorical and amoral vacuum.

 

A non-sequitur: I look forward to reading Sontag�s next essay, the one that draws incisive conclusions about Iraqi society on the basis of photographs of the jubilant crowds preening for the camera as they hang the mutilated corpses of four American security contractors from a bridge in Fallujah.

So, Greg, you pretty much come down on the side of Rush: it was all the equivalent of letting off a little steam by a bunch of frat boys? I take it you have not read Seymour M. Hersh's latest installment on the story in the 5/24 issue of <i>The New Yorker</i>. It turns out that the career military guys, the JAG folks, and even the CIA don't agree with you and Rush. They saw a systematic undermining of international agreements and objected to that, but they were over-ridden by in the Special Access Program crafted by Rumsfeld's right hand, Cambone. So, it seems that while Sontag's instincts were on target, as Alex noted she really didn't go far enough in identifying the real underlying causes of the proliferation of torture tactics in the treatment of prisoners.<br>    The thing is that even Rumsfeld-level BS isn't going to be able to counter the impact of those awful images. Most Americans just don't want to be identified with that level of brutality. Did anyone really think that the little guy in the White House could keep something so big under his hat? Does anyone think tomorrow's speech will turn the tide? It's been a bad image week for Bush and the Bushites, and it seems likely things are only going to get worse. Even today, CNN was broadcasting images of Bush who had fallen off his bicycle and scraped his hand. Just imagine the devestating effect of such images on the morale of our troops in Iraq.

<b>A word about Susan Sontag</b>. I don't think she would be very concerned about comments such as those made by Greg which must be familiar territory to her. I do wonder, however, about her reaction to the fact that she seems to have inspired a cult of tepid admiration; perhaps she is also inured to that as just another example of the Left's penchant to eat its own. On reading my own comments in this vein and those of others who have damned her with faint praise, I have to say I am unhappy and contrite. I had the pleasure of attending one of her lectures a couple years ago. She was totally charming and demonstrated a command of language and logic that was truly inspiring. The idea that she is superficial just doesn't ring true with that experience. I think perhaps it is important to point out that Sontag is not a journalist. She operates in the realm of ideas, and her talent is in examining them with great thoroughness and following them wherever logic leads. I think that her latest effort is best seen as a complement to the work of investigative journalists like Hersh, and not as something inferior to it.<br>    I don't really care what apologists for atrocities think of Sontag, and I am saddened by the fact that we again find ourselves in a conflict in which the value of individuals be they of the intellectural elite or the Baghdad street is demeaned in the name of some greater good. I hope to live long enough to see a time when we will be able to rationally discuss Sontag's ideas about the importance or photography in our society, or her exploration of the obsession of the collector as in her novel, <i>The Volcano Lover</i>, which is also very relevant to the interests of many here. For now, I have nothing further to contribute to this conversation.

I agree with Greg that Sontag may have overstated her case in specifically equating the activities of Americans at Abu Ghraib (assuming those we don't know of weren't worse) with that of the most extreme forms of torture and mass murder. However, it's at least equally misleading to attempt to make a case that these photographs depict events and motivations not much different than that which goes on in a fraternity initiation.

 

Even if we assume our opponents are worse than we are in this war, it's much too late to reasonably portray ourselves as the good angel, as fresh and pure white as the new driven snow, brought by God to be the savior.

Up here in the Great White North, where we sometimes think of ourselves as Pure as The Snow, one of the Toronto Globe and Mail's star columnists wrote an Essay "I KNow Whom to Be Mad At", comparing the brutal beheading of Mark Berg to the Torture of Iraqi prisoners, and declaring her continued support for the Bush Admin., because: "beheading is worse that torture". How's that for moral relativism?

 

Taking Saddam's crimes into account, this kind of thinking (?) gives the "coalition" a really wide range of behaviour to excuse before some folks will think they have crossed the line.

 

First thing I remember Susan Sonntag saying after 9/11 was "hey, we can be angry at this event, but let's not be stupid" (ok that's a paraphrase, she would never begin a sentence with "hey"), in reaction to all the "the world is changed forever" and -my favourite; the exact opposite became true- "irony is over". A couple of writers at the New Yorker took her to task for that, but the relentless dumbing down of the political debate by Bush and his bullies has justified what she said.

 

She's brilliant and thoughtful; not always right; she favours complexity over simplicity; always worth reading.

Here is an interesting side note to this discussion:

 

 

Rumsfeld bans camera phones

From correspondents in London

May 23, 2004

 

MOBILE phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The Business newspaper reported today.

 

Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.

 

"Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works.

 

Disturbing new photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse, which the US government had reportedly tried to keep hidden, were published on Friday in the Washington Post newspaper.

 

The photos emerged along with details of testimony from inmates at Abu Ghraib who said they were sexually molested by female soldiers, beaten, sodomised and forced to eat food from toilets.

 

Agence France-Presse

 

This report appears on NEWS.com.au.