Visual Culture Blog

This is a screenshot from a Facebook user based in Cairo where, at the moment the screenshot was taken, a popular uprising is taking place. In order to protect the identity of the user, I blacked out their names and personal details. Consistent with various different Egyptian Facebook users, the profile photograph has been changed in recent days to reflect the countries mood. A number of users uploaded the Egyptian flag, others show images of Karl Marx or Che Guevera, yet the vast majority of politically motived profile changes on Egyptian Facebook accounts include a photograph taken by an anonymous person depicting the initial protest march on the 25th of January 2011 at El Tahrir Square in Cairo. As reported in an article on Fastcompany.com, the photograph was posted by a Facebook campaign called Mama Qarat.

The use of this specific photograph for a profile change is an important aspect in the current protest and the visual culture of ideological change. Taken from a high vantage point, the photograph depicts masses of people gathering in Cairo’s biggest public square protesting against the government and the president Hosni Mubarak. The location depicted in the photograph has a political significance since El Tahrir Square, or Freedom Square, has been the central focus for a number of protests in Cairo: from Anti-Iraq War to Pro-Palestinian marches, the square is a strategic point for political expression. Apart from that however, little detail is visible in the image. The masses remain absolutely anonymous. This is an important aspect because the image itself doesn’t compromise the identity of an individual protester (nor did I wish to compromise their identity by showing their profile information). By choosing this photograph as profile shot, the Egyptian Facebook user is equally willing to suspend his or her photographic identity in place of a greater cause.

The photograph is also highly self-referential with regard to the context it is disseminated in. While it depicts masses of people, the photograph itself is uploaded by masses of people signifying their allegiance with the anti-government protests. In other words, the photograph signifies the popular uprising in two important ways: in what it depicts, but also, in the way that it is circulated via the social network. Here, it is also important to point out that the existence of social media in itself is a critical agent in uprisings in Iran, Tunisia and most recently Egypt. This is the power of the so-called flashmob: an almost instantaneous gathering of a large mass of people effectuated through social media such as Facebook or Twitter.

The recent changes by Egyptian Facebook users underlines the significance of the social network in the creation of a critical mass which has proven to take down autocratic regimes in the past. The changing of the profile photograph is significant because, apart from the Facebook users name, the profile photograph is the first visual encounter with the user, and, importantly, Facebook informs other users when the a number of ‘friends’ change their profile photograph. As the anonymous photograph is uploaded at a rapid rate in Egypt, the photograph in itself becomes the agent of political change.

For more on cultural production in the Arab world, please read Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field edited by Tarik Sabry. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.

Chris Hondros, Samar Hassan crying

In my last blog post, I wrote about a photograph by photojournalist Chris Hondros which shows an Iraqi girl crouching on the ground and crying. Minutes before the image was taken, Samar Hassan’s parents were shot dead by American troops in a tragic accident as they failed to stop at a checkpoint. Another photograph from Hondros’ series shows the traumatic effects this event had on the children who were also in the car. Samar is crying while her youngest brother appears totally dazed by what has happened. In this blog post I want to unravel the story further, and show that Hondros’ iconic photograph of Samar Hassan’s immeasurable grief has an unsuspecting afterlife which is directly related to the complex relationship between photojournalism, ethics and empathy.

Chris Hondros

The Hassan Family, Iraq, ca. 2004

On that day, six children were huddling in the back seat as the family, seen in above family photograph, was on their way home. Whereas all the children survived, the parents were killed instantly. In this radio interview from 2007, Chris Hondros recalls the tragic sequence of events unfolding. In the accompanying slideshow to the interview, the sheer horror is clearly detectable on the children’s faces as they emerge from the car. What is not mentioned in the interview is that, apart from photographing Samar Hassan crouching on the floor as she cries in grief, Chris Hondros photographed Samar’s brother Rakan who was injured in the shooting. It wasn’t clear at the time, but a bullet hit Rakan’s spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. In one photograph, Rakan can be seen lying on the ground in front of the car as he is unable to move. Another image shows him pressed against a wall clearly in a state of shock. Hondros’ last photograph of Rakan shows him being rushed to the hospital.

Chris Hondros

Chris Hondros

Chris Hondros

This is where Chris Hondros’ series of photograph ends, and a new story begins. As Samar Hassan’s cry was echoing around the world each time the horrific photograph of her was published, a team led by US Senator Edward M. Kennedy sought to help her paralyzed brother. The motivation for this is clear. The parents were killed at the hands of American troops, but Rakan’s life could still be saved. In September 2005, Rakan was flown to the US via Germany to begin medical treatment at the Mass. General Hospital in Boston. Rakan’s arrival at the hospital instantly became a story of hope, redemption and ethics in an otherwise messy war in distant Iraq. The Boston Globe picked up on the story and ran a long series of photographs called Rakan’s Life.

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

The brief for Michele McDonald, the Boston Globe staff photographer assigned with photographing Rakan’s five months stay in Boston, appears to have been to produce the visual antithesis to Chris Hondros horrific war photography from Iraq. If Hondros’ photographs might raise concerns over ethics in photojournalism, such as photographing vulnerable subjects in a moment of tragedy, McDonald’s photographs apparently seek to portray a more positive story. Rakan, so it appears in the series of photographs, is now in safe and capable hands. At first Rakan seems overwhelmed and timid in his new environment, but as his health is improving, he can be seen smiling, and also, importantly, making others smile. After all, this is not only the story about Rakan, but also, it is the story about American mass media desperately seeking for a positive take on the war in Iraq.

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

Michele McDonald, Rakan in Boston

For it’s tragic irony, one photograph in particular stands out. Rakan sits in his hospital bed wearing a Spiderman suit which he received from the hospital staff for Halloween (apparently Rakan always liked Spiderman). Not only does this image represent a clash between cultures, the image also represents the contrast between Spiderman’s imagined superpowers and Rakan’s actual disabilities. Under the disguise of Spiderman’s suit, Rakan turns, for a brief moment, into an all American boy. The hospital staff have clearly taken to Rakan. By the time his visit comes to an end, he is wearing a Boston Red Sox jacket and hat. To the readers of the Boston Globe, this association with Boston’s baseball team clearly signifies that Rakan is now one of them.

Michele McDonald, Rakan in military hospital in Germany

Michele McDonald, Rakan arriving in Iraq

Michele McDonald, Rakan welcomed by US troops

Michele McDonald, Rakan waving goodbye

Rakan then returned to Iraq via Germany. The fact that he could walk with crutches was celebrated as a huge success story. Here too, the Boston Globe was there to photograph the events. The last photograph in the series shows Rakan waving from a car driven by his brother-in-law. It’s his family that now care for Rakan and his siblings, including Samar who was the subject of Chris Hondros iconic image. While it was Hondros’ photograph of Samar that raised public awareness about one of the many injustices of war, it was also Hondros’ photograph that instigated the photographic series on Rakan’s rehabilitation in America. Ideologically the two set of images are on opposite sides of the spectrum: one showed the horrors of war, and the other sought to depict that there are also ethical decisions to be made in a war. I don’t mean the ethical decision of the photographer, but rather, as I have pointed out in my last blog post, the ethical decision by the viewer of the photograph.

Hondros’ photograph effectuated a cycle of photographic representation that sought to signify, not only the hopes of an Iraqi boy, but the hope of redemption in an act of goodwill. Sadly, this is not how the story ended. On June 16th 2008, Rakan was killed by a bomb placed by insurgents next to his new home. It is believed that Rakan and his family might have been targeted for accepting medical treatment in America.

For more on this topic, please read Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others and Susie Linfield’s The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images, Samar Hassan screams after her parents were shot by US troops in Tal Afar in January 2005. Hussein and Camila Hassan died when they failed to stop their car at a checkpoint.

This photograph by the photojournalist Chris Hondros is one of the most iconic photographs emerging out of the Iraq War. A young girl can be seen crouching on the floor, her mouth wide open as she cries in grief. Minutes before the photograph was taken, her parents were shot dead as their car failed to stop at an American checkpoint. Thinking that the car was driven by a suicide bomber, American soldiers opened fire not realizing that, with five children in the back seat, a family was on their way home. The photograph represents the tragedy, the horror but also the confusion integral to any war. As explored in a song by the British poet Giles Watson, the crying girl in this photograph signifies the many injustices of war.

There are many elements which elevate this photograph to an iconic status. The image is filled with visual paradoxes that add to the complexity of its meaning. There is for example the soldier standing in the darkness of the night as his torch is illuminating the young girl. The image clearly evokes the dichotomy between the soldier and the innocent child. This devision is further emphasized by the girl’s crouching position, whereas the soldier is so tall in comparison that his upper body is cropped out of the image. While the girl’s identity is revealed in the image and the caption (her name is Samar Hassan), the soldier remains anonymous, masked by darkness and a uniform.

Edvard Much, The Scream

The power of the photograph partially hinges on the perception that this girl is in pain, as signified by her wide open mouth. That this scream could also signify a psychological rather than a physical pain has been explored by the Norwegian symbolist painter Edvard Munch in his iconic painting ‘The Scream’. Here, it is Samar Hassan’s gesture and her body language that signifies this psychological trauma. It is unclear however if Samar is not also physically hurt herself as she just barely survived an onslaught of bullets pelleting her parent’s car. Samar’s bloody hands raise the question wether or not the trail of blood on the floor was caused by her own injuries. Her dress has several rose petals imprinted on it which makes this distinction even more difficult. Most dramatically however, the blood also seems to be dripping, like a tear, just below her right eye. In the photograph, Samar’s tears have turned into blood. Of the many drops of blood on the floor, a single drop on the soldier’s left foot clearly stands out: it signifies that the soldier too is marked by his experience of war.

Nick Ut, Napalm Girl, Vietnam, 1972

The history of modern warfare is inextricably linked to the history of photojournalism and its often photographs with children that provoke the strongest reactions. Nick Ut’s 1972 photograph of a naked girl by the name Kim Phúc walking towards him as her village was bombed by Napalm similarly represented the horror of war from a child’s point of view. In both Ut’s and Hondros’ case, the photographs also represented a public relations disaster for the US government. As the echo of Samar Hassan’s scream reverberated every time the photograph was printed in the newspapers or published and re-published on the internet, the US military immediately revoked the photographer Chris Hondros’s access to the battalion he was embedded in. Clearly, this was not the type of image that the US military wanted the world to see.

Hondros’ photograph also raises issues about ethics: it almost appears as if the soldier, unwittingly or not, is aiding the photographer as he supplies him with a source of light. This might signify the privileged position of working as a so-called embedded photojournalist. While the soldier’s torchlight, and by extension also his gun, is pointing at the girl, the photographer’s camera is equally pointing at her. As Susan Sontag has explored in her book ‘On Photography’, it is no coincidence that the photographic terms shooting a picture, taking a shot, or even a photographer as shooter, all derive from handling a gun. A group of four South African photojournalists took on the moniker ‘The Bang Bang Club’ referring to both, the violence that they photograph and the metaphorical violence involved in taking photographs of people in extreme situations.

Similar to Nick Ut’s photograph of Kim Phúc, the photograph of Samar Hassan relates to the complex issue of ethics in photojournalism. Ethics, as the dictionary tells us, is a set of moral principles. Derived from the Greek word for custom, habit or character, Ethos is one of the most difficult terms to define in existential philosophy. Yet, fundamental to the Aristotelian concept of ethos is the ethical principle of voluntary choice. In other words, the choice to take a picture or the choice not to take the picture. In seeking to overcome the vaguely defined issue of ethics in photojournalism, the National Press Photographers Association NPPA publishes a code of ethics for their members. This code of ethics reads, under section 4:

“4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.”

It is clear from these NPPA guidelines that several factors in fact apply to Hondros’ photograph. The girl in the photography clearly is a ‘vulnerable subject’, a ‘victim of a tragedy’, and in a ‘private moment of grief’. Yet as the NPPA also points out, the code of ethics does not apply if the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see what was being photographed. What this formula effectively refers to is that the photograph is justified as long as people want to see the photograph. In other words, the code of ethics hinges on the viewer, not the photographer. Here it is important to realize that the photograph is not just brutal, violent, horrifying or tragic. Rather, the uncanny formal beauty of Hondros’ photograph establishes that aesthetic concerns have likely affected any ethical considerations an invasion of Samar Hassan’s privacy might have provoked. Five years after the image was shot, Hondros’ photograph represents the complex encounter of ethics and photojournalism with a trail of blood that is only getting longer.

Please read about the after life of Chris Hondros’ photography, in my follow up post.

For more on this topic, please read Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others and Susie Linfield’s The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Other recommendations can be found in our online bookshop.