Atrocity and Action: The Performative Force of the Abu Ghraib Photographs (2012) Peggy Phelan

Source: Phelan, P (2012) Atrocity and Action: The Performative Force of the Abu Ghraib Photographs in Bachten, G. at al (eds) (2012) Picturing Atrocity: Photography in crisis, London: Reacktion Books. (Pp51-61)

Phelan questions what photographs of atrocities prohibit and prevent by examining images through performance. When presented with an atrocity photograph, viewer considers what has been done, what is being done and what they can do to help. In digital photography, the photograph is seen when it is taken and on viewing. Phelan argues there is a blind spot in atrocity photographs so the viewer may not see what the photograph is really depicting because the image is traumatic.

Phelan compares atrocity photographs to Barthes punctum in Camera Lucida where the press of the shutter signals the death of the subject. Barthes thought that a portrait photograph activates mourning through its affective force by providing a space for grief. If the subject is already dead, the viewer goes through more extreme grief because they are reflecting on the literal subject.

Phelan argues that atrocity photographs don’t work like this because they are in the present rather than the past tense. The viewer may find the first reading traumatic and then the image is seen in the past tense. Occasionally an atrocity photograph stands out – one which maintains its “performative force” and not judged on truth. (Phelan, 2012:54).

Atrocity photographs share a link with trauma psychology and may activate a trauma which has not been coded or decoded. People may react to atrocity with disbelief or defensiveness. Culture will affect the way the photograph is regarded. Absorption, repression, political meaning, evidence, art exhibitions and triggers to violence are all ways in which the atrocity may be viewed. Errol Morris (2009) produced a film called Standard Operating Procedure showing some of these images.

The photographs can be viewed through different gazes; the male gaze, imperial colonist gaze, racist gaze as we are used to Hollywood using scenes like this in movies. The Abu Ghraib atrocity images were taken by American soldiers of Iraq prisoners (e.g. Gilligan on a box (2003) Sergeant Ivan Frederick). America looked defensively at these photographs and questions what it said about them rather than being concerned for the prisoners. If these are compared to historical events the present tense is removed making them easier to look at. E.g. The hooded man has his head covered so the viewer does not know who he is and his pose is Christ-like. In other images, prisoners are covered in blood or handcuffed and portrayed as if close to death. This removes the subject from the photograph. Phelan explains that because of this we do not see what is really being portrayed which she described as the blind spot. Photographs are labelled – ideology, sadism, racism, ethical, pornography of war, imprisonment which still does not address the issue. The photographs were taken so that the prisoners would release intelligence information to their interrogators. The photographs are preparation for what comes next in war.

In order to see the photograph, the viewer has to recognise that people can’t see. Didl Huberman explains that

“With the visible, we are of course in the realm of what manifests itself. The visual, by contrast, would designate that irregular net of event symptoms that reaches the visible as so many gleams or radiances, “traces of articulation”, as so many indices…indices of what? Of something – a work, a memory in process, that has been nowhere fully described, attested or set down in an archive, because its signifying “material” is the first of all the image.” (Phelan, 2012:56)

The implied interpretation makes us not see what is in the photograph. Photographs pose as weapons. We ask questions. Torture is made visible. Errol Morris and Philip Gourevitch argue that

“the pose is obviously contrived and theatrical, a deliberate intervention that appears to belong to some dark ritual, a primal scene of martyrdom. The picture transfixes us because it looks like the truth, but looking at it we can only imagine what the truth is: torture, execution and a scene staged for the camera. So we seize on the figure of Gilligan as a symbol that stands for all that was wrong at Abu Ghraib – and all that we cannot and do not want to – understand about how it came to this. (Phelan, 2012:59)

The viewers ask questions such as who, why, what, when, where, how and react differently to the images which contribute to the meaning of how we view Abu Ghraib.