Here is what I read to a crowd of people at Homegrown Cafe in Hamilton, ON, last night for the Time and Place: A Cultural Quarterly event. And what a great night is was. "This is a photograph I took in Rwanda last year as part of a course I was taking at Western. Part of the course included an intense, and condensed ten-day trip in which we visited the six national genocide memorial sites and about a dozen local, community sites. Before I get into my experience of the time and place in this photo, i want to take you back in time to the events that led to the creation of this space. In early April 1994, many of us were focused on or distracted by Kurt Cobain's sudden death, the first democratic elections in South Africa since the fall of apartheid, the spectacular, sensationalistic murder trial of OJ Simpson, while there was also the news of a small African country in Joseph Conrad's deep, dark heart of Africa (as the press would continually portray it), where government-backed militias unleashed a most horrific, brutal, carefully calculated and unprecedentedly swift genocide against the minority Tutsi population. From April 6 to July 4, in the space of 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed at the hands of the militia, government forces, the Rwandan police and army, and at the hands of neighbors, friends, and in some cases even family members. Some of you may remember this, or have learned more about it since then. Some of you may recall that a Canadian general, who has since become somewhat of a household figure, Romeo Dallaire, was the head of the UN Peacekeeping mission in Rwanda at the time, there to oversee peace negotiations between the extremist government and the rebels that had been in conflict for the previous four years. Some of you may also recall the controversy over the fact that UN soldiers were not allowed to intervene as it was against their mandate. This photograph is of a forest adjacent to one of the six national memorial sites. It is the site of the largest resistance against the genocidaires. The memorial site on the Bisesero hill overlooks the hilltop where the resistance fighters held off their perpetrators for nearly the full length of the genocide, only to be overcome in its last few days. The memorial site also overlooks a nearby village inhabited by a few of the survivors of that resistance group.
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I was fortunate enough, on Tuesday, September 24, to see a performance by Magnum photographer Larry Towell (who lives on his farm just outside of London, ON, where I am attending school), and Mike Stevens on (beautiful) harmonica. https://phi-centre.com/en/events/id/BloodInTheSoil It was a haunting intersection of bluegrass/country music (performed by Towell and Stevens), along with Towell's poetry and songwriting, and video and slideshow presentations of places he has traveled to. I found it experimentally exciting - a novel way of enhancing the meaning of the experiences in these image, but also somewhat self-congratulatory (too focused on HIS experiences, not of those in the pictures). I was able to talk with him only briefly afterwards, and from what I gather through his comments, this performance is part of a growing trend in photojournalism today - marketing though multimedia (and I use 'marketing' purposefully, because it seemed to be more about showcasing himself and Magnum than the people/circumstances in the images). On the one hand I thought this performance was really immersive and intense for the spectators, but then again I was disappointed as well. Because our conversation was not even that, it was just brief commenting, it did confirm in me the sense I got after talking with the photographers in Cambridge, break-time banter is not the time/place to get into the serious topics I want to broach, it is something to be handled very sensitively. I do so see that there is a difficult balancing/negotiating that press photographers have to contend with (like so many of the rest of us in other fields): a balance of ethics (personal morals and social norms) and political-economic realities (conditions). Opportunities, imperatives, responsibilities and limitations. As much as grant writing can feel like a chore, it is certainly a good way to feel really close to your research interests, something that is hard to feel when in the throws of coursework. What I was wondering though, while feeling a grant application was an unwanted distraction at this time, was how to integrate what has become a vital component of academic life with the requirements of the degree. The grant-writing process has proven to be quite enlightening and frustrating, and I feel I would have benefited from having had more formal opportunities to discuss, explore and simply focus on the application within a peer and mentor setting.
I found the process enlightening because it helped me work through my project in a concrete manner, at least more concrete than just etherial discussions (though certainly still not concrete in the sense of a complete proposal). The process was also enlightening in its reconfirmation of the commodified and politicized nature of academic work. As much as academics try to maintain freedom, there is certainly a way in which research is 'focused' and 'directed' through economic conditions. The process of completing this grant application was also frustrating because of this knowledge of the constraints and commodification of academia - notably the fact that so few of the applicants will receive this funding support. And frustrating also because the opportunities were slim in terms of being able to really work through my research plan. If the process were included in some way as a degree requirement (a small credit), then there would be the ability to create a formal course (if it's not done this way, it is easy to be 'too busy' to attend), or workshop in which this painful process can be made more collegial and productive. Without such a workshop, and for those who have the time and inclination to make some comments, here is a portion of my SSHRC application: What is a photograph of dying meant to be if not a way to bring us closer to Death? Can photographs accomplish this, and to what ends? For French philosopher Roland Barthes (1980), all photographs are flat Death, reflective of our (the 'modern West's') distanced, sterile experience of death. Once any living or dying being is photographed, they are instantly - at the click of a button - objectified, rendered unceremoniously dead. This, he goes on to explain, is the "asymbolic" way in which death is experienced, more specifically in his time, as an increasingly secular event (Barthes 1980, p.92). Extending this viewpoint, death today is medicalized and/or politicized - removing it even farther from natural or even a mystical eventuality - it is now a problem to be solved. The flatness Barthes envisions, however, does not coincide with the way in which visual representations also engage, raise awareness, engender solidarity, and generate empathy. Also, the experience of death is taking on new meaning as the ageing population increases. In my research, I will explore visual representations of dying as a way of reconciling the flattness of the photograph with the experience of dying, and argue for a more responsive and responsible humanitarian photography. The photograph may be, in Barthes' sense, one-dimensional, while the experience of photography is anything but. By experience I take my meaning from the sociability of photography (Edwards 2011) and the event of photography (Azoullay 2012). These conceptions refer to the implicit and explicit human relations and expectations that are generated, negotiated and contested through the act of creating & recreating (e.g., in the spectator's realm) photographs. Contemporary visual theory conceives the photographed subject as having a powerful political agency enabling their photographed selves, even if not taken with this intent, to become a political actor (Linfield 2010; Azoullay 2008). Despite this view, the positivist legacy of photography remains, resulting in images that still subjugate those photographed at the cost of loosing sight of the political issue (Campbell 2012). Thus, photography has a duality: Barthes' flat Death on the one hand, and a vitality and dynamism - a life of its own - on the other. A main question I seek to answer is the role imagination plays in this duality, and what it means for a humanitarian photography. Photos of death have a history of being understood as replete with political and moral stances. Whether to take action against an atrocity or generate new conceptions of humanity (Sliwinski 2011), there is no lack of imaginative space in such photographs. Despite the political power of these images, critics argue that the individuals in the images become reified forms of the political violence (Calain 2012; Campbell 2011; De Waal 1997). As static representatives of their historical moment, the critics claim, much supposed 'humanitarian' photography denies its subjects’ agency (Kleinman & Kleinman 1996; Campbell 2012). Though the photo may be used to bear witness to atrocity, to human suffering, the people within the images become the corporeal of the political situation rather than the agents of its change. We, the spectators on the other end, are the supposed action-takers. Certainly it is laudable that attention be paid to the political struggle, but at what cost? Certainly also, not all images in humanitarian or political struggles are exploitative and objectifying. Can such images be re-visioned and reimagined? Visual representations of EOL in high-resources countries have become a space of political action by the individuals in the images. Dying with dignity, palliative care, ageing and end of life have become ways of empowering the dying and raising awareness of this fact of life (Green 2008). Images of dying and death here are seen as representing a particular social justice issue: the right of everyone to die with minimal suffering. The individuals in these images are in the act of challenging the status quo. These new discourses are spilling over into the global geopolitical arena with issues like palliative care becoming a large area of focus for global health (Singer and Bowman 2002). To see dying as a global social justice issue repositions the perception of photos of dying in other political and socioeconomic contexts. Dying becomes an issue in itself, not only a referent to something else: herein lies a different imagination. |
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