War of Images - Contemporary War Photography PDF

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War of Images 001 War of Images Contemporary War Photography Sandra Vitaljić 002 Introduction War of Images 003 TABLE OF CONTENTS 160 The Audience 167 Aestethicizing War 9 Introduction 169 Citizen Journalism and Amateur Photography as News Reporting I WAR PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE MEDIA 15 Propaganda V FR...

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War of Images

War of Images Contemporary War Photography

Sandra Vitaljić

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Introduction

TABLE OF CONTENTS 9

Introduction

I 15 29 43 67 75

WAR PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE MEDIA Propaganda The Pornography of Atrocities Warriors and Heroes Women as Warriors and Victims The Absence of Images

II 85 95

TROPHY PHOTOGRAPHY Image as a trophy Photography as a Torture Tool in the Prison of Abu Ghraib

III 105 112 116 118 122 124 132

THE ETHICS OF PHOTO-JOURNALISM Photography as Evidence Fauxtography Staging Photography and Photo - opportunities Denotation and Connotation Is Bin Laden Really Dead? War Tourists Photographer as a Participant

IV WHO IS WATCHING 145 The Photographer 156 The Media

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160 The Audience 167 Aestethicizing War 169 Citizen Journalism and Amateur Photography as News Reporting V FROM THE BATTLEFIELD TO THE GALLERY 177 Sufering for Sale 183 A Paradigm Shift in War Photography VI INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION – ON MEMORY 201 Private and Collective Memory 207 Infertile Grounds – The Photograph as a Site of Memory VII APPENDIX – Excerpt from Pavo Urban's War Journal and Conversations with War Photographers 216 Pavo Urban 219 Goran Pichler 222 Saša Kralj 225 Srđan Ilić 229 Imre Szabo 232 Miloš Cvetković 235 Kamenko Pajić 239 Milomir Kovačević Strašni 242 Filip Horvat 244 Ron Haviv 248 Wade Goddard

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Introduction

War of Images

Introduction

“‘The illiteracy of the future,’ someone has said, ‘will be ignorance not of reading or writing, but of photography.’ But shouldn’t the photographer who cannot read his own pictures be no less accounted illiterate?”1 This is a question that Walter Benjamin raised as early as 1931. “Reading one’s pictures” and the role of photography in the society have always intrigued me as highly relevant issues, both in the early day of photographic practice and today. The social impact of photography may be most evident in the status of documentary photography, since the idea of documentary realism has been fundamental to photographic practice. A photograph states that something “was once there” and that its referent “really existed,”2 which makes it function as an index.3 However, the credibility of photography does not really depend on the photographic technique, but rather on a series of discursive, social, and culturally determined practices. A crucial element of documentary photography is the photographer’s presence at the site of events and his photographic “testimony”. Joerg Bader has considered it as a speciic agreement based on trust between the observer and the one presenting the photograph, regardless of whether it is the photographer personally or the mass media distributing the photographs.4 Even though the credibility of photography as a medium has largely been undermined, especially with the emergence of digital images, this system of belief, established during the almost hundred and eighty years of photographic history, still determines the reception of photography. The relationship between the photographer in the role of witness and the producer of the photographic image, the mass media as the transmitters and articulators of the meaning and the observer, that is, the audience that consumes the image, are among the issues 1 Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” in idem, Selected Writings, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), vol. 2/2, 527. 2 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Relections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), p. 82. 3„In Pierce’s semiotics, index is a sign referring to a phenomenon which it signiies by actually being caused by it. In other words, it establishes its meanings on the basis of physical relationship with the object it denotes.” Miško Šuvaković, Pojmovnik suvremene umjetnosti [Lexicon of contemporary art] (Zagreb: Horetzky, 2005), p. 275. 4 Joerg Bader, “Prove Time – Live Out Time,” in Mutations – Perspectives on Photography, ed. Chantal Pontbriand (Göttingen: Steidl, 2011), p. 294.

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that I explore in this book. My research primarily focused on war photography, a narrow segment of documentary photography. Among my reasons for choosing that particular subject is certainly the fact that the area of former Yugoslavia was involved in ierce warfare and thus war reportage was a genre explored by a large number of local photographers, mostly without originally intending to do it and without suicient preparation for what was awaiting them, both in the battleield and in the ield of propaganda. Their only option was mostly to document the events from one particular side, namely “their own”, which actually put into question the basic journalistic mandate about the ideal, “neutral” reporting. Many among them additionally had to cope with their patriotic feelings, which necessarily inluenced the way they represented the events in their photographs. Foreign journalists were quite easily changing sides, which is what probably gave them the privilege of reporting more objectively. However, many among them had come to Yugoslavia without knowing much about the causes and the evolution of the conlict. Battleields in the midst of Europe were an easily accessible destination and therefore the Yugoslav war attracted many reporters who were seeking adventure and wanted to produce fascinating photographs that would launch them straight to the Olympus of photojournalism. Martha Rosler is very critical about photojournalism, as she believes that war reporters are motivated by a “combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism, and metaphysics, trophy hunting - and careerism.”5 David Campany has emphasized that today’s photojournalism largely relies on nostalgia for a “golden age” of photographic reportage, which has become extremely commodiied, thus supporting the myth of “heroic individuals” who have shaped the history of photojournalism with their “unique style.”6 The syntax of photojournalism perpetuates the patterns created in the beginnings of modern photojournalism, in the 1930s and 1940s, and continuing this practice ignores the fact that present-day wars require a more modern mode of representation. My intention was to look at the subject of war photography in a universal, global context, even though I used examples from the area of former Yugoslavia whenever it was possible. The model of media representation analyzed using example of Croatia and Serbia in war conlict is also applicable to the contemporary war reporting from Iraq or Afghanistan. Thus, the stereotypical representation of the opposite side in the US media, the Iraqis and the Afghanis in this case, brings about the dehumanization of entire populations, which again leads to brutal abuse of civilians in Iraq’s prisons under the US administration. It is a direct consequence of a politics based on the reality composed of stereotypes, with the corresponding banalization and reduction of the issue to binary oppositions. The principle of “embedding”, which means that the war reporters can do their job only if attached to a unit of the US army, simultaneously 5 Martha Rosler, “In, around, and Afterthoughts,” in The Photography Reader, ed. Liz Wells (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 263. 6 David Campany, “The Eclipse of the Event,” in Mutations – Perspectives on Photography, ed. Chantal Pontbriand, p. 292.

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implies strong self-censorship added to the censorship of the military authorities. The photographers necessarily become close with the soldiers they spend all of their time with; eventually, these same soldiers are in charge of their personal safety. Moreover, it means that they report from one angle alone, same as in the war on the territory of former Yugoslavia. The chapter on War Photography and the Media is dedicated to an analysis of the Croatian and Serbian media that facilitated the escalation of a political conlict into a war, systematically dehumanized the opposed side, and intensiied the war psychosis. Photography played a particularly important role in constructing the image of the soldier/ hero in the media. Such airmative representation of one’s own soldiers was crucial in creating a positive image of the war and inluencing the public opinion into supporting war eforts, while the image of the woman/victim served to victimize one’s own ethnic group through the mass media. That is linked to the fact that images of rape were absent from the public discourse despite the fact that mass rapes during the war were a part of military strategy throughout the history, including the war in former Yugoslavia and the rest of modern warfare. In the chapter on Trophy Photography, I analyze photographs and videos shot by the very perpetrators of torture and executions during the war on the territory of former Yugoslavia. I have also analyzed photographs that were shot by US soldiers in the prison of Abu Ghraib, where they transformed the very act into a tool for humiliating and torturing their victims. The fourth chapter deals with various issues pertaining to the ethics of photojournalism, from exploring the myth about the veracity of photography to the issue of the photographer’s responsibility for digital manipulation or shooting staged situations. Particular attention has been dedicated to the representation of the victims of war as a way of presenting the Other, and the questionable role of the photographer in the events that he/she witnesses. The ifth chapter, titled Who Is Watching?, discusses the role of the photographer and the printed media in mediating the event, exploring the role of the spectators as the consumers of images from areas afected by war. The chapter From the Battleield to the Gallery deals with dislocating war photographs from the newspaper pages into the gallery space, which results in their commodiication and in new discursive practices. In the inal, seventh chapter I discuss the relationship between photography and private and collective memory. My intense involvement with the issue of war and its representation during the past years has left traces on my own artistic practice as well, even though I was never a war photographer myself. I dedicated my attention to what is left after the war – the collective memory deined by the oicial politics of remembering – trying to snatch out of collective oblivion those who are denied the right to be remembered. At the end of the book, as an appendix, I have added transcripts of conversations with photographers who documented war or its consequences in the territory of former Yugoslavia. The reader will

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thus be able to gain an insight into the circumstances in which the photographers were working at that time, what sort of challenges they had to face, and how they see their practice of war reporting today. Those of my collocutors who are still pursuing career in war photography also spoke about the current aspects of their profession. I must warn my readers that the illustrations accompanying the text include disturbing photographs with graphic violence.

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War Photography and Media

1. Romeo Ibrišević Defence of the Mladost bridge Zagreb, 1991.

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Propaganda Hate Speech and Images of Hatred

“Photography is a message,” Barthes wrote in his renown essay “The Photographic Message”.1 This message is created by the photographer, and also by a group of professional newspaper editors, who choose between various photographs, place the selected ones onto the page, surrounding and thus “deining” them with headlines and captions. Their work is what places the photograph into a framework/context that communicates its meaning to the public. Beaumont Newhall has emphasized that, in the genre of documentary photography, the photographer “seeks to do more than convey information...His aim is to persuade and convince”.2 For Estelle Jussim, these processes of persuasion “involve not only the psychology of individuals and the social psychology of groups, but the mass psychology of entire cultures and societies.”3 “’Information’ is never neutral,” Jussim writes, “since it is always received and interpreted by individuals according to their idiosyncratic beliefs, tempered by the massive conditioning that their socio-cultural environment provides.”4 Propaganda acts upon the preexisting opinions and unconscious motives of individuals and groups, relying to the universal mythologies of the particular society. Jowett and O’Donnell have deined propaganda as a “deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”5 Propaganda that was in force during the war in former Yugoslavia is considered by the authors to be a classic example. War propaganda is a part of psychological war intended to dishearten and demoralize the enemy. However, when directed at one’s own citizens, it aims at securing their support for the war, mobilizing them for the ight, and creating a negative or hostile attitude towards the opposed group. Propaganda emphasizes those segments of information that support the desired opinion and suppress or completely leave out all content that is contrary to its goals. In order to achieve the 1 Roland Barthes, “The Photographic Message,” in Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977), p. 15. 2 Beaumont Newhall in Estelle Jussim, “Propaganda and Persuasion,” in Eternal Moment: Essays on the Photographic Image (New York: Aperture Foundation, 1989), p. 103. 3 Ibidem. 4 Ibid., p. 104. 5 Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion (London: Sage Publications, 1999), p. 6.

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War Photography and Media

Propaganda

wanted bias in public opinion, it uses information selectively and even resorts to lying. Without the mass media, which played the key role in preparing the war by deepening hatred between the nations and demonizing the enemy, the war in Yugoslavia, and probably anywhere else in the world, would not have been so imminent. Propaganda in the mass media “helped the Croatian authorities to present themselves falsely as the last bastion of Western ‘democratic’ values. The Bosnian authorities, dominated by the Muslims, used propaganda to present themselves as the only innocent victims in that war, although it was not always true. Above all, propaganda helped the Serbian authorities in Belgrade and Bosnia to convince all Serbs that they were the tragic victims of other people’s sins in an international conspiracy aimed at destroying the Serbian people and its country.”6 Renaud de la Brosse, professor at the University of Reims ChampagneArdenne, has carried out a detailed analysis of the mass media in Serbia at the request of the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This report, titled Political Propaganda and the Plan to Create a ‘State for All Serbs’: Consequences of Using the Media for Ultra-Nationalist Ends, was used during the trial of Slobodan Milošević in The Hague. De la Brosse has quoted several basic principles valid for all propaganda: simpliication, projection of one’s own deiciencies upon others, instrumentalization of news to one’s own advantage, persistent repetition of the message, relying on myths and history, and building up a national consensus. With the collapse of the socialist system in Yugoslavia and the irst multiparty elections, nationalist parties came to power and created tensions with their nationalist rhetoric that eventually escalated into a war. The new political leaders, both in Croatia and in Serbia, used the same control of the mass media, placing people loyal to their party to the leading positions in the news agencies owned by the state, especially radio, television, and the main newspapers. Dozens of the best journalists who refused to serve the propaganda machinery, to spread hatred and intolerance, were replaced by those who were willing to do it in the name of patriotism.7 The government did not like it when journalists were questioning its vision about the cause of war and its evolution, and the media haunted various citizens and public personalities who were of the “wrong” nationality or refused to express their unconditional loyalty to the government and the patriotic cause. “Journalists were divided into dissident journalists, for whom democracy was more important than the independent Croatian state, and convert journalists, for whom the state, in this case the Croatian state, would always be more important than democracy.”8 Ivo Banac is of the opinion that the concept of “ideological journalism” is crucial for these biased mass media, which is a legacy of the totalitarian systems. He has deined the concept as the idea that “the media must serve something beyond them, a greater idea

6 William Shawcross, “Preface”, in Kovanje rata – mediji u Srbiji, Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini [Forging the war: Mass Media in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina], ed. Mark Thompson (Zagreb: HHO, 1995), p. XX. 7 For a detailed presentation for the state of the mass media at that time, see Thompson, op. cit. 8 Danko Plevnik, Hrvatski obrat [The Croatian turn] (Zagreb: Durieux, 1993), p. 16, in Thompson, op. cit., p. 123.

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or project. In this case, it was the war project.”9 Pressure exerted on the journalists was most evident in the most inluential among the mass media – the Croatian Television – where some very young journalists, without any experience, managed to become the celebrities of war reportage. Their reports were often sensationalist productions modeled upon attractive materials borrowed from other global televisions, but the information lacked credibility and there was no attempt to present the event from diferent angles.10 All the warring parties were well aware of the power of the mass media and tried throughout the war to inluence even the foreign journalists and the international mass media to transmit their version of the “truth” to the rest of the world. Since that did not always happen, the journalists themselves would often become targets and reporting from the battleield ended in death for 75 journalists, both local and international.11 After the beginning of war in Croatia, the reporting discourse changed within a brief period of time. The units of Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), which openly joined the Serbian side, were termed “Serbian communist soldatesque,” “aggression army,” or “Serbian Chetniks,” while the rebelling Serbs became the “log revolutionaries,” “Chetniks”, “terrorists”, and “rebels”. In Serbia, all members of the Croatian army were proclaimed to be “Ustashas” or “bloodthirsty beasts.” According to Jacques Ellul, propaganda is a two-stage process, whereby pre-propaganda creates feelings and introduces stereotypes that will prove useful when the time for action comes.12 But even pre-propaganda must be based on the already existing ideas and emotions. The past is very important as a powerful political and discursive factor, since it provides an endless source of legitimacy. As long as there is a consensus about the past and the system of values it preserves in a society, it may become a referential framework in which messages from the actual moment can be embedded.13 The Serbian mass media were publishing a number of articles about the crimes committed in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II, reproducing photographs from its concentration camps.14 The entire Croatian nation was presented as thirsting for genocide and inclined to the Ustasha movement, in order to convince the Serbs that they were facing a new wave of sufering. At the same time, the Chetniks of Draža Mihailović were promoted into 9 Ivo Banac, “Pred zadatošću istorije dirigov...