Atrocity Photography Essay

330 Words2 Pages
We learn atrocities of holocausts and genocidal wars through existing evidence of sore documentary photographs – atrocity photographs, but the concept of atrocity photography is itself far for being innocent, simply because every photograph of such an event is a bit of high-level moralized political argument, encouraging the viewer to bear witness, to make judgments, to take sides . Willing to create my response paper especially upon piece of contemporary recollection of the past - the “Remembering to Remember” period of Barbie Zelizer - I would like to question her viewpoint mainly built upon underlining that that human suffering was understood at that time without consideration of the context and events presented in the image (p 174 and p 180). As she reasonably noted about nineties, two main prominent practices – memory attached to commemoration of certain events; and memory that involved ruptures in the ongoing consensus about atrocity story – existed. By illustrating the misleading experience of PBS series (p 189) and by introducing the debates over atrocity photography – less associated with the event itself, but more concerned about how remember the atrocity – Zelizer touches the question of continuation of shaping the stories behind atrocity and ethics and politics of reinterpreting it, which is, I believe, the central idea of our readings in this week, but which, however, lacks to be explained in its matter. It is Zelizer that introduces that this idea to be not only a concern of modern era, but rather a dilemma of even nineties as well, when, according to the author, first debates and conferences about the question took place (p 191). Thus, atrocity photography was and never is taken for granted as “re-elaboration of the past” but it is rather politicized interpretation of atrocity by establishing "chronic voyeuristic relation" with second witnessing
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