Visual Culture Blog

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.

Looking at the wall

A tumblr site dedicated to Kim Jong Il Looking at Things is the latest online craze in visual culture. As the title of the site suggests, it’s a collection of photographs depicting the North Korean dictator ostensibly caught in moments of ‘looking’. By now, the site is so popular that the tumblr server periodically breaks down. The timing of the tumblr site is impeccable: launched on the 26th of October 2010 by an anonymous user in Lisbon, Portugal, the site was barely up and running for a month as North Korean missiles hit South Korean targets, killing two civilians on the 22nd of November 2010. By that time, the tumblr site already had a solid following. In this time of mounting tension between the two Koreas, it appears that Kim Jong Il’s image was never as popular as it is now.

Looking at fish

What is it about these photographs that makes them so popular? As the viewer is looking at Kim Jong Il, he is looking at fish, a factory, a radish, a powerpoint presentation and so forth. Sigmund Freud defined this dualistic relationship between the pleasure of looking and being looked at as Schaulust, or scopophilia. The viewer is drawn to these photographs of Kim Jong Il by the scopophilic drive to encounter the Other. Here, the Other is a notorious dictator, bathing in the cult of personality, reigning over a introverted and closed off regime once described by George W. Bush being part of the ‘axis of evil’. In a sense, the popularity of photographs of Kim Jong Il points to the desire to put a face to this Western construct of evil.

Looking at wheat

The anonymous photographer taking these pictures must have worked under immense pressure to produce flattering images of Kim Jong Il. One of the big problems is that Kim Jong Il is short built and, despite a special pair of plateau shows, consistently appears smaller than those who are supposed to be ‘below’ him. The photographer seeks to avoid this visual contradiction by photographing Kim Jong Il from a lower vantage point. This methodology is apparent in most photographs in which Kim Jong Il conducts so-called ‘tours of field guidance’ – a tradition he inherited from his father Kim Il Sung. In the photograph of Kim Jong Il looking at wheat for instance, the lower vantage point of the camera underlines his position as leader, looking forward, his gaze directed to the future, while everyone else (including the camera and by extension the viewer) is looking at him. The tragic irony in photographs of Kim Jong Il looking at his country’s agriculture is that chronic food shortages have caused millions of deaths in North Korea over the last two decades. Here, the photograph is clearly part of a propaganda apparatus that seeks to establish that the North Korean regime is capable of feeding its own people.

Looking at a radish

However, the photographs are also, although they are not intended to be, tragically funny. There is for example the image of Kim Jong Il holding a radish with this right hand. The left hand, like in most photographs of the ‘Dear Leader’, remains hidden or tucked into a pocket. The West has long been speculating that Kim Jong Il’s health is fading and that his left side of the body is partially paralyzed. In the photograph, the physical decline of Kim Jong Il is signified by the radish (the phallus) pointing downwards thus prompting a look of disapproval by the dictator. Next to Kim Jong Il is his Vice Marshal Ri Yong-Ho, one of the most senior military officers in North Korea, with a notepad. A cursory glance at the collection of photographs reveals that people standing next to or near Kim Jong Il customarily carry a notepad and a pen. They are, as it appears in the images, always prepared to make a note of sudden bursts of ingenuity exclaimed by Kim Jong Il. He is the speaker while others make note of it.

Looking at hats

Looking at buckets

And while senior military staff and members of the Politbüro are always prepared for guidance by their leader, the photographer too, is prepared to react when Kim Jong Il indulges in his well-known eccentricities. In one image he puts on a straw hat, while in another he appears to crack a joke about a red bucket. These are the kind of uncanny moments that humanize Kim Jong Il. The photographs of him smiling and making others smile don’t sit well in the larger context of military aggression and brutal state oppression. The discomfort felt looking at these photographs of Kim Jong Il is comparable to a key scene in ‘The Downfall’ in which Adolf Hitler is depicted petting his German Shepherd. How can evil be caring? In the same way, how can evil be funny?

This is maybe the main reason why these photographs have become so popular recently: the uncanny desire for a visual encounter with the Other during a time in which a simple dichotomization between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ through a Bushian looking glass seems to fail. And while American and South Korean warships gather in the East China Sea in preparation for an all out war with Pyongyang, effectively turning the geopolitical gaze from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq to North Korea, a little site depicting a little man keeps on attracting new visitors eager to look at him – trying to understand, who is this man.

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