6 Jelena Jovičić Images of crisis and the crisis of images: a visual analysis of four frames of representation of ‘refugeeness’ in Swedish newspapers The period 2015–2016 in Sweden (and beyond) became largely known as the refugee crisis – a construct readily associated with a negative event or a destabilizing period of time, which can affect both individuals and larger groups and societies. The term crisis came alongside the word ‘refugee’ – a pairing which is particularly loaded and comes with highly problematic political impositions. For example, how did people fleeing come to embody the term crisis? Media coverage of the events has been vast. Images and video material of boats crowded with de-faced and de-named black and brown bodies, images of indignity such as precarious living conditions and police abuse, as well as death and mourning. A common photographic style found in newspapers is that of a bird’s-eye view – shots taken ‘from above’, which create a link to National Geographic’s style of capturing ‘wild life’ that is present before our eyes yet too dangerous to approach closely. Importantly, these relationships are manifestations of power structures: the gaze of the photographer/film-maker directed at their subject, the counter gaze of the subject towards the photographer and the spectator of the image. There are also the gaze of the editors in charge of selecting the right image for publishing and, importantly, the gaze of the researcher while collecting and analysing these very images. Therefore, naming an event a refugee crisis is not only a matter of language, but also that of knowledge production and construction of specific realities. In relation to that, Rose (2016) argues that images offer worldviews – they are not innocent carriers of a message to the world, rather, they give us interpretations of the world that are carried out in very particular ways. In order to explore these world- views, and as this chapter will further illustrate, I turn to study what I call the crisis of images in Swedish newspaper dailies Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Svenska Dagbladet (SvD). What I refer to as the crisis of images is embed- ded in the simplified, shock and threat inducing portrayal of the very complex issues of flight, whereby people on the move are often forced to embody stereotypical and violent imageries. Jelena Jovičić - 9781526146847 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 10:38:06PM via free access 106 Refugees and the violence of welfare bureaucracies This chapter critically examines front-page photography in Swedish newspapers and aims to answer the question: How is refugeeness con- structed as a part of the refugee crisis 2015–2016 in Swedish daily news- papers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet? In particular, I bring forward the knowledge of the visual construction of the refugee bodies and refugees’ positioning in relation to the Swedish nation state. Finally, I go beyond the research fixation on the refugee as the only agent in the crisis discourses and point to the other actors playing a role in how we understand the question of flight. In the coming paragraphs I present the overview of literature that informs the present chapter. Visual construction of refugeeness Research investigating the matter of visual representation and social con- struction of the meaning of refugeeness commonly deals with aspects of the physical appearance of refugee bodies in photography and the environment in which they are caught – the interest being that of the intersecting issues of gender, racialization and class (Wright, 2002; Johnson, 2011; on class and economic capital, see chapter 2). Moreover, another common research interest is that of refugee bodies and the visual composition of numbers – are people who are fleeing captured as individuals, small and medium groups or as a mass exodus of people? And what kind of knowledge do these different compositions disseminate to the public (Wright, 2002; Bleiker et al., 2013; Zhang and Hellmueller, 2017; Jovičić, 2018)? In line with one important theme of this book – the construction of refugeeness and refugee crisis in the context of Nordic welfare states – I am guided by the major concerns of the aforementioned research, yet I also shift away from the fixation on the refugee body and consider other actors that play a role in the visual construction of flight in the case of Sweden (on media discourse about refugees, see chapter 7). The visual construction of refugeeness most commonly depends on the technologies of othering, which commonly perpetuate ideas of difference and elicit discussions on deservingness and genuineness (Bhabha, 1983). Research consistently points to a clear dualism in the visual portrayal of flight and refugees – on the one hand the victimized refugee body in need of protection, on the other hand the welfare and security threat – a crisis posed to the nation state (Malkki, 1995; Wright, 2002; Mannik, 2012; Bleiker et al., 2013; Jovičić, 2018). Aforementioned discussions are imbed- ded in the Western understanding of who is a ‘genuine’ refugee and how refugees are imagined and represented. Visual representation, therefore, has important implications for the public perception of refugees, one’s willing- ness to reflect and act on this highly politicized issue, and, most importantly, for the experiences of the people fleeing. In an intriguing study of a private Jelena Jovičić - 9781526146847 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 10:38:06PM via free access Images of crisis and the crisis of images 107 photography collection made by Estonian refugees fleeing the Red Army via Sweden, Mannik (2012) juxtaposes the intimate and the private in the visual capture of refugeehood made by people fleeing with de-individualized, de-historicized, and public mainstream portrayals. Whereas the private photography accounts for ‘personal expression and political perspectives, as well as myriad other human attributes’ (p. 263), the public depictions leave us with de-faced masses of bodies shot from distance, emphasizing the positionality of ‘us’ here gazing in safety and ‘them’ out there in precarity. Relatedly, Johnson (2011) argues that since the Cold War the refugee has been racialized, feminized and victimized. The dominant depiction has changed from that of white-European refugees to those of refugees racial- ized as non-white and localized as South from Europe; from the strong political figure – a man being politically prosecuted, to that of a depoliti- cized victim – often co-opted in the imagery of women holding children. The victimization frame is found to work better in eliciting empathy, since negative emotions such as sadness or despair elicit more compassion (Small and Verocci, 2009). As Zhang and Hellmueller (2017, p. 502) note, these frames are ‘more effective to generate viewers’ sympathy and thus emotion- ally engage viewers in the distant suffering.’ However, I argue that the issue at stake is more complex than this and I align with Susan Sontag and her thoughts about compassion fatigue – the idea that the more exposed we are to the images of indignity and suffering, the more normalized it becomes until we cannot feel anything anymore. Therefore, images have the power to ‘anesthetize’ (Sontag, 2008). In the context of the visual construction of refugeeness, Johnson argues that ‘Victimisation removes political agency from the figure of the refugee establishing a condition of political voicelessness’ (2011, p. 1028). Portrait photography and depictions of smaller groups of people are frequently used to attain the above-mentioned victimization frame, especially in the iconic shots of the so-called ‘Madonna and Child’, whereby women and children are the most common visual depiction of refugees as victims (Wright, 2002; Johnson, 2011). On the other hand, recent research findings show that, across different geographical contexts, people fleeing are overall most com- monly constructed as medium to large groups of de-faced and de-named bodies threatening to destabilize the nation state (Mannik, 2012; Bleiker et al., 2013; Zhang and Hellmueller, 2017; Jovičić, 2018). Hence, the visual construction of refugeeness has historically been changing (Wright, 2002; Johnson, 2011). Despite the complex histories and current intersectional struggles of refugees in Europe, very specific imageries, such as those of either voiceless victims or threats to national security, seem to persist into the present. Additionally, the abundance of visual portrayals of people fleeing is a process that can have serious implications for lives of refugees. For example, Slovic et al. (2017) argue that the iconic image of Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body Jelena Jovičić - 9781526146847 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 10:38:06PM via free access 108 Refugees and the violence of welfare bureaucracies (see also chapter 4) had an impact in terms of the relative popularity of search terms such as ‘refugees’ or ‘Syria’, as well as the spike in terms of donations to the Swedish Red Cross campaign supporting Syrian refugees in Sweden. However, the major finding of their study is that this impact was short-lived or, as they write: ‘Our search data show that the world was basically asleep as the body count in Syria rose steadily into the hundreds of thousands’ (p. 641). In addition to the finding of the short-livedness of empathetic reactions to tragic images of lifeless refugee bodies, what persists is the violence, and not only in the sense of depicting the current condition