Facing hunger, framing food banks, imaging austerity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the scopic regime established by images of UK food banks. Analysis of three popular images of ‘Food Bank Britain’ reveals the persistence of historical practices for visualizing hunger – namely, the dominance of faciality, infantilization of the hungry, and erasure of geographical context from visual frames. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, this paper demonstrates how such images serve to ‘frame’ austerity – where framing describes the link between the bounding of the literal edges of an image and the epistemic, affective frames for understanding and feeling austerity that are mobilized. Rather than attempting to portray ‘real’ images of food banks, this scopic regime is instead marked by the production of ocular affects that structure the feelings of the viewer towards certain political ends. It is concluded that this framing of hunger denies the political life of food bank users, a process that in turn effaces the radical questions necessary to address the causes of hunger at a time of austerity.