When, September 12, 2001, Todd Maisel shall publish front-page photograph of a severed hand, the publisher of Daily News , Ed Kosner is at the center of a controversy: it does not show the body, let alone body parts, many claim. The images of bodies falling or jumping from the towers already face sensitivity newspaper readers also deeply troubled by the attacks. Already, because it is already too much.
The images of September 11, whether television or photographs, were largely censored by the decisions of institutional content publishers but also, through, for political commentary: before the enemy, do not show the bodies. The dismembered bodies, dead, are a sign of weakness, a weakness shameful when it comes time to fight an invisible enemy and protein platform. Maybe. Perhaps, too, Was there not much to show, as said Mary Ann Golon of Time (quoted by David Friend): " Theys Thought, There Had To Be arms and legs and hands. There weren Purpose 't. The FDNY WORKED With The Photographer Who Said The forensics crews WAS destruction so complete There Were Times When You Would Not Even A Whole see gold Whole phone keypad. It Had Turned to Dust. " Very few images of bodies, they are "intact, whole or dismembered therefore have circulated since the attacks of 11 September. One suspects, however, that several photographs were taken, not only the same day but in the weeks and months that followed, during the search for human remains at Ground Zero. Perhaps these pictures for now preserved as much by photographers as "civilians" and firefighters, police and rescue workers, they will re-surface when sufficient time has passed.
I was talking, a few days ago, with DB Both deeply disturbed by the devastation in Haiti following the earthquake of January 12, we used to talk images from Haiti : survivors in shock, injured waiting for care, may not arrive on time. And others who are lying in the streets, the body sometimes barely concealed by a sheet. Most often, a hand, a foot, deformed by fractures, exceed. Why these bodies, called D, are they shown in this way, almost offhandedly, while the bodies of 11 September have been hidden? The fact that the earthquake (like Hurricane Katrina) or a natural disaster he plays in the representation that we give? After all, she suggested, in the case of September 11, an act of war had been committed, show the victims would have been an admission of vulnerability against the enemy.
Maybe. Except that. Except that the images of victims of armed conflicts gleefully circulating the rest of the time. And that these United States, so opposed to the broadcast of images of victims of September 11 did not show less pictures from Iraq or Afghanistan, Palestine or elsewhere.
What causes some victims to be hidden, while others are shown? Newspapers, television reports invaded by body littering the streets of Port-au-Prince, could they turn away from these images that can not help but hurt the Haitian diaspora around the world looking in the pictures finally know for its nationals who survived? Show images, in the case of Haiti, New Orleans, is there a way to cause enough compassion to ensure that the international community act?
And there's another reason, one that is difficult to tackle: September 11, the victims, as a community, came from an America if not easy, at least favored. It was not the case in New Orleans flood victims that followed Katrina were mostly poor. And black. Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti and now: the victims are, for many, the Other. And perhaps it is easier to show the Other in all its vulnerability, its weakness. Perhaps the show he commits to anything. Except for a few false compassion, a little offbeat, which is perhaps another way of perpetuating a remote control, judge people less fortunate than others, less spoiled by life, less protected from danger, just by an accident of birth.
In this reflection, still in its infancy, still troubled by the power of images, impotence help, I can only answer this: to show or not the body responds in a strategy. This strategy, whether humanitarian or political, nevertheless as a way to control the information that the reaction of one who looks at the pictures. And even if its objective, as seems the case now, is right, encourage donations and humanitarian aid, encourage a global response, this does not change the fact that the way to do so, it seems unfair.
Or, more precisely, disrespectful.
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