Camera War, Again

Abstract

Despite this awareness, I never cease to be surprised by the pictures I encounter in the news. The war in Iraq has undoubtedly produced some of the most dreadful entries in the history of camera war. The torture photographs from Abu Ghraib come to mind, of course, but I find the pictures of the dead just as disturbing. Some of the first images of this kind arrived in the summer of 2003 with the American Provisional Authority’s release of photographs of the battered and bloodied bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay. The images were supposedly to provide Iraqis with confirmation of their deaths, or perhaps more ideologically, to suggest that the old regime had come to an end. This parading of the dead was followed by Associated Press photographer Khalid Mohammed’s photograph in which burnt remains of several American civilian contractors hang gracelessly from a bridge in Fallujah. Although Sontag drew a connection to the history of American lynching photographs in regards to the Abu Ghraib images (which appeared just a month later), I think Mohammed’s photograph from Fallujah strikes a stronger resonance to this past: a rowdy crowd looking for recognition from the camera, charred bodies swinging from the end of a rope, the sheer furor of the moment captured in an image. Then came Abu Ghraib. Then came the grisly, low-res beheading of Nick Berg. One shudders to think what will come next.