It isn’t going to win any awards, but you wouldn’t ask that of a photo taken by the Butte County Sheriff’s Department.

It does highlight important information, however.  South Dakota has hit with a blizzard that killed cattle–not all of them, as you can see, or even half of them, but plenty: 80,000 head from 6000 ranches.  Because the blizzard came so early, the cattle hadn’t been moved to winter pastures that provide more shelter.  Those flimsy strands of barbed wire stretched across the flat terrain capture some of that sense of being trapped on the open range.  Because it was so extreme–4 feet of snow and 70 mph winds–the poor beasts were simply overcome with hypothermia and exhaustion.  You can sense that from the large animal being all but completely buried by the snow on the plain–not even a drift was needed.  And although the sun soon was shining again to melt the snow quickly, the damage had been done, leaving the ranchers little option but to count the dead and get on with the sad, dirty work of disposing of the carcasses.

The photograph’s composition has faults that match the sadness within.  The subject is not clear, as one of the cattle is buried and the other blurred.  The photo is cropped so closely that it seems too fragmented, with too much left out of the picture.  Context here is everything, yet the photo doesn’t provide much in the way of context.  Lacking sufficient information about the place or event, the photo seems almost a random example instead of a decisive moment.

So, even despite the stippling of blue and white in the snowfield, it’s not a pretty picture.  And that’s another reason why it might be a good photo: it not only communicates some of the facts on the ground, but also captures some of the problems in representing the disaster.  Because the disaster in question is not simply due to a snowfall.  As the LA Times rightly reported, this also is a story about the government shutdown.

You will not be surprised to learn that, prior to the storm, most residents in the region supported the shutdown.  Nor will you be shocked to hear that some of those same people think that the closure should not extend to disaster relief for the region.  According to the director of a ranchers association, “One appropriate role for these guys [the federal government] is to lend a hand after disasters like this.”

He is exactly right, of course, but there is a missing piece.  You can’t just turn the government on when you need it.  Or at least not until human beings are able to perfectly predict the future and the government exists only for you.  Until then, wisdom tells us that the unexpected is always happening somewhere, and that just because it wasn’t your turn recently doesn’t mean you’re not due.  (South Dakota has received disaster aid before, including for a blizzard in 1996, but apparently that was a long time ago.)  Oh, yes, and that everyone is better off if they pool resources to be distributed as needed to prevent or recover from disasters, which is exactly what governments are created to do.  That’s why it is important to keep the government open.

But readers of this blog know that.  The question I’d like to raise concerns the place for empathy in this debate and in the photo above.  Of course, I’m big on empathy and am not above faulting the right for being a few bricks short of a load in that regard.  On this issue, however, I’m becoming a conservative–you know, someone who emphasizes accountability and taking personal responsibility for one’s actions.  From that perspective, it’s a no brainer: those who support the shutdown and similar coercive, anti-democratic, anti-governmental policies should be the last in line to receive government aid.  That’s not playing politics, it’s giving them their wish.

Of course, the minute they are willing to admit that they, too, are “takers,” we can get back to doing things as they ought to be done.   But that is only part of the story today.  The second question is whether the photo above, or any other for that matter, can induce the level of empathy appropriate to the issue.

What I like about the photo in this regard is that it puts the empathy where it typically would not be otherwise: the cattle.  I don’t mean to make light of the economic damage and personal heartache that is involved, or to imply that the ranchers don’t care for their animals; that would be wrong.  But the cattle aren’t just economic entities and they did suffer and die miserably.  Which actually points to yet another issue: they died, not from any lack of care by the ranchers, but from the unexpectedly extreme weather.

And wouldn’t you know it, such extremes are one of the consequences of global warming.  In other words, one of the consequences of climate change that is caused in part by large animal production and denied by far too many Red State voters.  Indeed, some of the cattle in South Dakota had been sent up from Texas and New Mexico because of droughts there–and, like heavy rain and snowfalls, droughts are another of the extreme weather conditions that are becoming more frequent due to global warming.

So even if you care only about the cattle, you can’t escape the politics of empathy.  The results can be troubling, messy, and depressing, not least because so much has been left outside the frame.  But if you let yourself care for those who suffered unnecessarily, you might be prompted to think about larger patterns of cooperation and sustainability.

So take another look: maybe it’s not such a bad picture after all.  Certainly when compared to the shutdown itself, which is just plain ugly.

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It could almost be something by Banksy: A human figure drawn to challenge the politics of neglect that lies behind urban decay.

The man stands, entombed alive within the wall, and so we might ask what else remains locked up, and what voices reverberate in the air just beyond the range of normal hearing, and what demonic spirit would create such a place. Street art can make you realize that the street already is art, but not necessarily something made for those passing through.

But it’s only like a painting, and not on the street.  Modern prisons are designed to be far away from public awareness.  Places of internal surveillance, they nonetheless remain unseen and visually impenetrable.  Indeed, at least one of them is largely invisible in the midst of a downtown metropolis.  The only exception comes when a photographer is allowed inside, and the results are never reassuring.

Or perhaps they are.  Some certainly will say that bad guys should be locked up and that prisons shouldn’t be country clubs.  This photo is from the Secure Housing Unit at Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran, California, and the inmates placed there have been determined to be highly dangerous to other people.  The criminal justice system is not infallible, but one would be unwise to disregard its judgment about the worst cases without considerable evidence to the contrary.  And if the old prison looks a wreck, liberals still probably would prefer to see California’s limited funds spent on schools.  So, what’s the problem?

The problem, if we want to call it that, is that this photograph is by far the most striking and profound I have seen this week.  Granted it’s been a slow week visually, and the slide shows have leaned on autumnal colors and the ongoing festival of everyday life.  Such images are a worthy celebration of small differences and simple pleasures in a common world, but they also are highly repetitive and therefore capable of reinforcing unreflective consensus and emotional complacency.  As one part of that effect, it becomes easy to ignore how much is at stake and which decisions really matter if people are to life together peacefully.

Prisons are monuments to bad decisions: those of the inmates and many more as well.  They also have a habit of reflecting the society that builds them.  The corroded metal and decayed surfaces above suggest a place that is more dungeon than modern institution, and with that, a society that is more feudal than it realizes.  And yet, in the midst of that, the man stands as if standing for the concept of individual human being, something that can only be realized if the individual is treated with dignity or, as in this case, insists on that right in spite of everything.

The philosophy of existentialism was rightly criticized for putting too much emphasis on the individual’s power of choice. One result, it seemed, was that victims could be blamed for their suffering; another was that an essentialist definition of human nature remained in place of more critical attention to specific social circumstances.  The photograph above could be faulted on both points: the man is responsible for his actions, which, given where he is, must have been horrible; his image nonetheless reveals an irreducible essence that belies a full account of how a society ends up with such a person in such a place.

That said, visual existentialism might not work in quite the same way as its more discursive counterpart. One difference will be the artistic allusions at work: e.g., the similarity to paintings by Francis Bacon; the pairing of the two door frames as they contrast figural representation and found object abstraction; the four frames that could come from a medieval alter piece depicting various stages of agony and illumination.  Prompts such as these can lead to questions about social organization and its signs and symptoms.

Another critical edge comes from the change in historical context.  There are more prisons today than in the 1950s, and more photographs.  In a time when the same technologies and ideologies are applied to both prisons and societies, the prisoner acquires representational power simply by become visible.  And when smiling people are brightly, repetitively present on every surface, placing a man behind a screen makes him appear more authentically human.

The fact that he might also be evil is not something that should disqualify him.  Have a nice day.

Photograph by Robert Galbraith/Reuters.  Regarding prisons, be sure to see the Prison Photography blog.

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I love taking the tour of the U.S. Capitol whenever I visit Washington, D.C. and have a free afternoon.  The building is alive with its own history at every turn, the grand architecture belying the gravitas that attends the heart of the American legislative process and the stories relayed by the tour guides—usually congressional staff members or interns—underscoring its commitment to democratic governance.  And of course there is always the chance opportunity that you will recognize one or another of the nation’s legislators as they scurry about from one meeting to the next.  On one occasion I was separated from my tour group and had to run to catch up; I turned a corner at full trot and literally ran into Senator Ted Kennedy.  I was amazed both at how short he was in comparison to how I imagined the “Lion of the Senate,” and how gracious he was–all the more surprising given that it was I who ran into him.  In short, the Capitol tour is designed to imbue ordinary citizens with a sense of the importance of the American legislative process.  And it rarely fails to deliver.  But the photograph above tells a different story.

The gentleman leading the tour in the photograph above is not a staffer or intern, but rather Senator John Boozman (R) from Arkansas.  Leading such tours is not a regular part of the daily activities of a U.S. Senator, who typically has more important things to be doing, like deliberating domestic and foreign policy.  Nevertheless, a number of the members of Congress have taken to leading constituent tours this past week while the federal government is shut down in the wake of  House Speaker John Boehner’s refusal to bring a clean bill to fund the government before the House of Representatives for an up or down vote—a vote that all agree would surely succeed and reopen the government.  The reaction of the people in the tour group is interesting as it ranges from nonchalant interest (the couple on the left) to impatient boredom (the women in the print dress on the right).  The woman in the green sweater appears to be amused, but that is more likely because she realizes that she is part of a scene being photographed than anything the Senator is actually saying.  You might disagree with my characterizations here, but however you read the photograph, the image depicts an audience who seem altogether unconcerned with (or ignorant of) the gravity of the government shutdown.  After all, they got their tour of the Capitol while all of the major tourist sites in the capitol city are shut down.

If I didn’t know that this was an AP photograph I might have assumed that it was a parody staged by The Onion, for it surely has the feel of absurdity about it.  But it is real, which of course makes it all the more absurd.  There is  however a different and perhaps more important point to be made, for virtually all of the photographs reporting on the government shutdown feature images of federal government buildings and national monuments and parks with signs in front of them that indicate that they are closed for business (e.g., here).  Some of these are buildings that process various (so-called “non-essential) social and public services, but on the whole the implication of such images is that the primary effect of the shutdown is to inconvenience people on vacation (except in Arizona, where the state government, which otherwise has trouble funding public education, chose to pick up the tab to keep the Grand Canyon open).

What we don’t see photographs of are the invisible effects of the shutdown that go well beyond private and individual inconveniences and point instead to the underlying failure of our modern society to recognize and attend to its larger social responsibilities.  We don’t see the 800,000 federal employees who have been furloughed and will go without pay even though their own bills will continue to come due; we don’t see the sick individuals who risk pain and suffering because the NIH cannot accept new patients for the duration of the shutdown; we don’t see the consequences of shutting down the CDC’s seasonal flu program; we don’t see the impact of closing the EPA for business (except around superfund sites) or ceasing the food safety operations of the FDA; we don’t see the potential long term effects on the nearly nine million recipients of support from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program which provides nutritional supplements and health care to low income, pregnant and post-partum women and their babies, and which is closed for the duration of the government shutdown; we don’t see the consequences for nearly one million children of shutting down 1,600 Head Start Programs; and the list goes on.

The problem, of course, is not per se with photography or photojournalism, which would be hard pressed to show anyone of these things.  And yet, by emphasizing the closing of buildings and monuments and national parks as the primary, visible, and palpable effect of the government shutdown there is a sense in which the national media has played into the hands of those who would use their ability to legislate an artificial budgetary crisis for their own political ends.  Then again, perhaps the photograph above really is a parody that invites us to see and question the very absurdity of the machinations of the House of Boehner.  After all, members of Congress really do have more important things to be doing.

Credit:  Evan Vucchi/AP

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One of the characteristics of iconic images is that people play with them: artists, advocates, advertisers, comics, you name it, there always is somebody willing to drag and drop, cut, color, emblazon, or otherwise alter the image.  Of course, another feature of the icon is that it has a special place in the public archive; consequently, others will say these ordinary techniques of appropriation are improper or even an assault on artistic integrity and communal values.

For example, you just shouldn’t colorize a classic black and white photo, right?  Artistic integrity is at risk here.  Likewise, you shouldn’t strip a national icon of its patriotic content, should you?  Isn’t that a cheap shot at those who were being honored?

If you’ve read our work, you know that John and I think otherwise, but that’s not the point here.  What is interesting is how slide shows of each of these techniques have been circulating recently.  There are a number of collections of colorized icons: for example, here, here, and here.  (“Icon” often is being used more broadly that I would use the term, but I don’t own it and the difference usually is not worth an argument.)  And the second image above is from the Fatescapes project of the Slovakian artist Pavel Maria Smejkal.

Different techniques shouldn’t be strictly equated, but it is interesting to me how both accenting and removing the flag works to a similar effect of highlighting its importance.  Whatever the alternation of an iconic image, it usually reveals something important about the original.  That said, the differences are significant as well.  For example, the accented flag may mark the emotional response that is cued by but not actually evident in the photograph, while the emptied tableau highlights the extent to which war’s desolation was always a subordinate but important part of the composition.

So play on.  After all, we can always see the originals.

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Some photographs require that we ask the question we should ask of every photograph: What are we seeing?

A boy?  A boy looking at something we can’t see?  A boy posing for a photograph?  A boy and some sort of mask?  Perhaps a boy’s face shrouded in darkness and doubled by something inchoate; but what is that?

So we turn to the caption, as much for reassurance as for information.  Reuters labeled the photo as “A Free Syrian Army fighter looks through a hole in a wall in Aleppo’s Saif al-Dawla district September 22, 2013.”  OK, I guess that shape on the left is a hole, although it still looks like a brown papier mâché mask, something that is more akin to modern sculpture than conflict photography.  It is a hole through which the light illuminates a rock wall, but the dimensions seem off or the perspective turned somehow.  The odd shape, unfamiliar surface, and strict two-dimensionality of the image create a sense of optical distortion, almost like the anamorphic projection of a skull in Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors.  And so it could be a mask–or a death mask–after all.

Which is why I think the caption provides its own share of distortion.  I’m sure it’s accurate enough, but really: did you see a “Free Syrian Army fighter.”  Were the photo from Africa, wouldn’t he have been likely to be labeled a child soldier?  And is he looking as much as he is being offered to our view?  And does the place and date tell you anything about the substance of this photograph, that is, about this work of art?  Captions are important, but they also can be instructions in how not to see what is being shown.

So it is that I grasp for analogies.  Instead of a fierce freedom fighter, I see something closer to the funerary portraits of Roman Egypt.  (The paintings were placed on the mummified remains, and masks were made as well.)  Set amidst the dark background, the boy above seems almost to be a life-like image of himself (which, of course, he is to us).  Lifelike yet motionless, showing both the mummified head and the painted face: it’s as if he were already dead.

And he may be.  Aleppo is dying.  Syria is dying.  In the second decade of the 21st century, something of humanity itself seems to be dying.  Because that has happened before, we know that the human spirit can be regenerative, but the photo may be capturing a glimpse, as if through that odd hole, of another turn in the story.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this photo is how its slow, still artfulness may represent the way that Syria is dying.  It’s as if the energy already has been directed to creating the semblance, crafting the memorial, and remembering the dead rather than saving lives.

Those on all sides seem content to let Syria die, while saving just enough to maintain appearances.  If that’s so, all that’s left is portraiture.

Welcome to death’s studio.  There’s a mirror if you would like to use it.  We’ll be ready for you soon.

Photograph by Loubna Mrie/Reuters.

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Yeah, summer’s over, but we still need to hit the road.  We’ll be back on September 18th 20th.  (Sorry for the delay in getting back in gear, but we’re not as young as we look.  See you on Friday.)

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