Looking Again: Violence, Photography, Spectatorship, and Conflict Images of Children

School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts Looking Again: Violence, Photography, Spectatorship, and Conflict Images of Children Christopher Dennis Lewis This thesis is presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Of Curtin University May 2016 Declaration To the best of my knowledge and belief this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgment has been made. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. Human Ethics (For projects involving human participants/tissue, etc) The research presented and reported in this thesis was conducted in accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) – updated March 2014. The proposed research study received human research ethics approval from the Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee (EC00262), Approval Number MCCA−18−12. Signature: …………………………………………. 24 May, 2016 Date: ………………………... i ii Abstract This thesis examines questions of photographic violence, ethics and spectatorship. It focuses these questions through images of children in situations of war and conflict, ranging from one of the earliest instances of ‘disaster photography’, Willoughby Hooper’s images of the Madras famine of 1877, to the picturing of the drowned refugee toddler, Aylan Kurdi, on the shores of the Mediterranean in 2015. The thesis begins by engaging with the critique of photography as a form of symbolic violence, articulated most notably by Susan Sontag. It seeks a point of departure from Sontag’s emphasis on figure of the photographer by drawing on Ariella Azoulay’s notion of the spectator as an active agent in making and remaking a photograph’s meaning. At the centre of the thesis are relations of spectatorship: those that look at the event, those that look after, those that look now. Photographs are always taken with a view that they will be shared and looked at again and again, both by the photographer and by others. In every chapter, relations of spectatorship, the connection between the viewer, the medium and the image, are constantly present and constantly changing. The thesis pursues several key interrelated elements of the spectatorial relationship: context, presentation, temporality, photographic technologies and ethics. At the core of the thesis is the ethics of the imperative to look beyond the first glance – an imperative which, in the case of such violent, confronting images, particularly when children are involved, often forces us to look away (Carrabine 2011). Each of the chapters looks again and again at a single image: a trophy of lynching from the southern U.S; a pre-execution photograph of the Cambodian genocide; a partially destroyed relic of the war in Yugoslavia; an infamous tweeted image by the ISIS fighter, Khalid Sharrouf; an official U.S combat photograph of the wounded Omar Khadr, the youngest inmate of Guantanamo Bay prison. iii iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my Supervisor John Curtin Distinguished Professor Suvendrini Perera for her tireless work and assistance in completing this thesis. This joint journey started with my honours project and culminated in this thesis. I have the greatest admiration for the many suggestions and improvements that have helped me over this period of several years. I feel privileged to have had the honour of being supervised by someone who is so professional and insightful. Above all else, my admiration is for the love of humanity that emanates in any critique, in the goal of making the world a place of shared equality. In the time when my Supervisor was not present I wish to thank Dr Antonio Traverso for his guidance. In particular the final readings and comments helped me format and change key arguments into a much more rounded out thesis. After completing the final draft I want to acknowledge the skills of Sheng Huang who patiently circled the errors in presentation and format. I am grateful for the time and effort that was put into this to ensure the thesis showed consistency in content and grammar. The journey to a PhD often involves contact with many other people, both students and academics. Along the way I have had encouragement and input from many people including, Dr Doug Russell, Professor Jane Lydon, Professor Peter Beilharz, Rebecca S, Chemutai, Eva, Elizabeth, Allan, Julie L and Karen. My thanks to all for the help and support. Most importantly, to the children I write about, dead or alive, I hope to show the respect and consideration they deserve, not glorifying, condoning, or, minimizing deaths and violence I would not wish on anybody. v vi Table of Contents Declaration……………………………………………………………………………i Abstract……………………………………………………………………………...iii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………..v Table of Contents ……………………......................................................................vii Table of Illustrations………………………………………………………………...ix Preface: Sontag, Soft Murder and Open Wounds……………………………………4 Introduction: Towards an Ethics of Spectatorship Photographs and Salted Secrets…8 Chapter One: Early Disaster Images: Madras Famine 1877………………………..32 Chapter Two: The Trophy Business: Lynching in the South 1916…………………56 Chapter Three: The Bureaucracy of Genocide: Cambodia 1975-1979……………..94 Chapter Four: The Forensic Witness: Srebrenica and Vukovar 1996…………….126 Chapter Five: Abu Ykhiel to Guantanamo Bay 2002-2012………………………150 Chapter Six: Censored Images: Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham 2014…………178 Conclusion: Refugee Drownings: Mediterranean Sea 2015………………………204 Appendix to Chapter One………………………………………………………….219 Bibliography.………………………………………………………………………223 vii viii Table of Illustrations Figure 1.1 Digital Print. Chris Lewis, 2014………………………………………… 8 Figure 1.2 Lewis Payne Awaiting Execution. Alexander Gardener, 1865…………14 Figure 2.1 Madras Famine. Willoughby Hooper, 1877…………………………… 32 Figure 2.2 Digital Print. Chris Lewis, 2015……………………………………….. 47 Figure 3.1 Lynching of Jesse Washington. Fred Gildersleeve, 1916……….………56 Figure 3.2 Illustrated tableau from Types of Mankind, 1854…………………….... 59 Figure 3.3 Waco Crowd. Fred Gildersleeve, 1916………………………………… 65 Figure 3.4 Plate 28 from Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America... 77 Figure 3.5 Plate 38 from Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America... 78 Figure 3.6 Front cover from Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America……………………………………………………………………………. 82 Figure 4.1 Mother and child from The Killing Fields………………....................... 94 Figure 4.2 Front cover of The Cruel Radiance……………………………………. 97 Figure 4.3 B.M an inmate of the Long Island Farms from Rationale of Crime……101 Figure 5.1 From The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar. Gilles Peress, 1996….… 126 Figure 5.2 Webpage. Kodak Professional TRI-X Film. ………….……………….129 Figure 5.3 From The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar. Gilles Peress, 1996….… 131 Figure 5.4 From The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar. Gilles Peress, 1996……. 132 Figure 6.1 Passport Photograph of Omar Khadr. …………………………………150 Figure 6.2 Official U.S photograph of Omar Khadr. Abu Ykhiel, Afghanistan…. 151 Figure 6.3 Poster from campaign to bring Khadr back to Canada…….…………. 158 Figure 6.4 Omar Khadr cover of briarpatch magazine….……………………….. 159 Figure 6.5 Front cover from Guantanamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr. ……………………………………………………………………………………..161 Figure 6.6 Passport photograph inlaid against Heather Spears’ sketch from Omar Khadr: Oh Canada. Lines and margin numbers added. Chris Lewis, 2015……... 164 Figure 6.7 Sketch of Omar Khadr from Sketching Guantanamo: Court Sketches of the Military Tribunals, 2006-2013. Janet Hamlin, 2013. …………………………166 Figure 7.1 Pixelated image of Khaled Sharrouf’s son……………………………. 178 Figure 8.1 Aylan Kurdi. Nilüfer Demir, 2015. ……………………………………204 ix Figure 8.2 Aylan Kurdi. Nilüfer Demir, 2015……………………………………. 210 Figure 8.3 Digital Print. Chris Lewis, 2014……………………………………… 218 All other images Chris Lewis. x 1 2 3 Preface: Sontag, Soft Murder and Open Wounds Scholars have a lot of baggage, and they like to unpack up front the story of the research (Carol Saller, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2012). Last year, after viewing one particularly poignant, moving, image of two young girls hanging in a tree, murdered, after being subject to a gang rape, I did not sleep for the whole night as the image tormented me every time I dozed off. The anguish I felt was nothing compared to the pain the parents must have felt; not only losing their children to a horrific crime, but, then in making the decision to leave them hanging to bear witness to their loss and act as a reminder to all around of the evil that lurks in humanity. The parents can only imagine the final horrors their children suffered at the hands of what we would term ‘animalistic’ behaviour, though in reality, historically and today, it is all too human behaviour. I looked once, then looked again and read the image deeper, before finally turning my gaze away from a scene that I wish had never occurred. The original scene showing two girls dangling in death from a tree surrounded by wailing relatives was recorded via a photographic device, a mechanical witness leading to the image’s consumption and spectatorship with the potential to reach thousands via the inter-connected world we live in. This dissemination of photographs, the act of looking and looking again, the shared spectatorship of children subjected to violence, is at the core of the journey

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