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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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