You Could Get Used to It: Susan Sontag, Ariella Azoulay, and Photography's Sensus Communis

Abstract

war was long you get used to it --Zbigniew Herbert, Mr. Cogito Reads Newspaper On March 20, 2014, at 7:30 p.m., about sixty people gathered at Times Square in New York City. Standing across from a glimmering white Sephora sign and just a few feet from neon American flag glowing on New York City Police Department outpost, group raised pieces of pita bread toward a large digitally projected photograph on side of Thomson Reuters building. A broken tree protruding from a row of partially ruined buildings was anchoring horizon point in a photographic frame seemingly swelling with people, refugees lining up for food aid in Yarmouk camp in Damascus, Syria. 10 million people need our help in Syria, announced red lettering streaming across a digital banner running atop projected image. A few minutes later, projection repeated, then stopped; crowd thinned, but remained. It repeated hour later, at 8:30 p.m., and on same day and at precisely same times, projections of photograph also took place in Tokyo's Shibuya business district, one of busiest commercial areas in Japan. The projection, and campaign that led up to it, was both a classical pseudo-event, (1) staged for public and press, and a contemporary, transnational version of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century magic lantern show. (2) orchestrated not by missionaries but by a aid agency. The photograph had been circulating widely on media since United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Near East (UNRWA) released it on February 24, timed to coincide with a UN Security Council resolution debate about opening besieged areas of for aid. A vigorous online campaign organized through media platform Thunderclap accompanied photograph's release. UNRWA set a target of twenty-three million social media impressions for their hashtag #LetUsThrough; number was a symbolic choice as it was also pre-war population of Syria. (3) According to UNRWA, number of likes, tweets, and shares of photograph using hashtag was in fact 38.5 million, far exceeding their original goal. UNRWA aid deliveries were ceased after photograph was taken on January 31, 2014, due to what agency described as security concerns. (4) About three weeks later, they resumed and then stopped again. On April 24, UNRWA was allowed to resume deliveries. As of this writing in December 2014, UNRWA is not able to distribute aid in Yarmouk. (5) UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness unsurprisingly lauded photograph, describing it as cinematic in its scope and grandeur, and yet ... deeply personal. Etched on each small face is a very personal private story. It was, he said, the combination of epic and miniature that explained photograph's rapid-fire iconic status. (6) Almost one thousand newspapers worldwide ran it. (7) The Guardian published a large-scale reproduction on its front page; paper's columnist Jonathan Jones, echoing Gunness, described it as an epic scene of human suffering. (8) The Independent ran photo with headline, Syria crisis: The picture that shows true extent of inside camp Yarmouk, and Time magazine and Huffington Post were even more extreme in their assertion that this singular image represented everything likely distant viewer needed to know, choosing headlines, Picture Sums Up Syria's Humanitarian and This One Photo Will Show You Just How Terrible The Refugee Crisis Is. (Is humanitarian crisis or refugee crisis more accurate description? Syrian crisis or Palestinian crisis? Or are multiple descriptors necessary and still insufficient?) None of these articles referenced December 16, 2012, bombing by Assad forces of a mosque, a hospital, and a school in Yarmouk camp or described camp's complex and precarious recent history. …