When it comes to photographs, we are all deconstructionists now. After thirty years of Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard, anyone can confidently (if incorrectly) proclaim that photographs lie, manipulate, oppress; that they are “fictive constructs” and “discourses of power”; that they reveal only their own prejudices, not objective reality; that they express privilege, never truth. Yet more and more, it is upon these presumably meretricious, morally stained documents that we rely—not just to bring us news of the world, but to form our ethical and political consciousness and even, sometimes, to determine our actions.
–Susie Linfield, Boston Review
These past seven days have felt like a curse, albeit one easier to bear than the week before. There was the promising election in Senegal and the victory of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, but also the widely condemned coup d’état in Mali and hate crimes in the United States… One mustn’t trivialize anything, whether it seems positive or negative. The dialectic between the two poles is severe, hurtful, and sometimes deadly.
Finding oneself in the center, in the balance like Harold Lloyd, is no picnic. But anyway you don’t need me to tell you that we weren’t put on this earth for the laughs.
Mohamed Merah, the murderer in Montauban and Toulouse who filmed his crimes, and the RAID police team that filmed their assault. Who will watch these tapes? And to what end? I’m not asking to see them. A few months ago a photo was seen across the world: the highest American civilian and military authorities sat in the White House basement watching Bin Laden’s end. Only the “leaders” had the right to watch. Only they were sufficiently “mature,” to come back to a term I used last week. They aren’t sadists, they aren’t voyeurs, they’re responsible. After watching the raid in Pakistan, I wonder if a “psychological cell” was deployed to “de-traumatize.”
Lenin is supposed to have said: “You photographers, you are the dangerous ones.” I don’t have the 46 volumes of Comrade Lenin’s complete works memorized and I can’t attest to its veracity. But I do find it believable. Photography is DANGEROUS, it’s true. Let’s make the most of it. Take pictures, and live dangerously.
Have a good week.
