Ethics of the Photography of Atrocities

The Impact of Photography on History: Ethics of the Photography of Atrocities

Paul Watson’s iconic photography of the Vietnam War and Somalia brought to life those far-off wars to viewers at home. One image that won the Canadian Watson the Pulitzer Prize particularly haunted him, that of the desecrated body of an American soldier being torn apart by crowds in Mogadishu. The article “The Haunting of Paul Watson” actually notes how Watson had to go back for a second, less explicit photograph, because he was afraid newspapers would not publish the first. Watson himself later hunted down the dead man’s family to ask for forgiveness. He has said that, while powerful, that such photographs can be taken out of context and misinterpreted, dehumanizing the subjects. He felt this had been the case of his own prize-winning photograph, which he initially took to make a political point about how the American presence in the area was received by local Somalis.

Watson does not regret taking the photograph, he notes in the article, stating that his hope is that viewers can see their own feelings and thoughts reflected both in the dead soldier and the mobs of Somalis, and that they can engage in greater reflection about themselves as well as the ethics of foreign invasions. At other times, however, such photographs have inspired horror, as was the case of Richard Drew’s photograph of a falling man in the aftermath of the collapse of the Twin Towers during the attacks of 9/11. When family members do not have time to grieve or come to terms with the deaths of their loved ones, such photographs become even more contentious. Unlike American servicemen, photographs of the dying in 9/11 came as a complete shock to their family members, who expected their loved ones would have an ordinary day at work, not the horror they experienced. Also, the fact that their loved ones died by suicide (which they might not have known, had it not been for the photograph) raises further questions about the ethics of such displays.

In some instances, brutal photographs seem necessary to offer testimony to the horrors of war, such as the photographs of the Nazi death camps which bore witness to the genocide that many people attempted to look away from in the war’s aftermath (Junod). These photographs of teeth, glasses, and other belongings were obviously not the result of the victims’ family offering their permission, but are widely considered necessary, all the same, to bear witness to the tragedy (Junod). Arguably, the evidence of the 9/11 attacks was less necessary, at least whether the people in the bombed buildings were suicidally driven to jump or not. Photographing someone’s final hours seems grim and ghastly, although so is capturing artifacts like skulls and teeth.

But what is perhaps most horrific is that in the case of the Holocaust and even the 9/11 bombings, denialists and conspiracy theorists still abound, even in the face of photographic images. The Internet has made photographs of wartime atrocities even more widely disseminated than ever before. People have photography equipment on their persons at all times, in the form of their smartphones. But there is also greater ability to alter photographs, which has heightened distrust of the medium.

This raises the question if there is still the same need for the types of graphic photographs catalogued by Watson and Drew, if they are now less apt to be believed? The impact of these photographs may have been great, but the types of war and horrific acts of terrorism were not stopped by the power of such photographs. On the other hand, photographic images can still become iconic, and the photographs of Watson and Junod still have the power to disturb and provoke. Hopefully, they can also make people think and remember, which was Watson’s explicit reason not only for taking the photograph but also writing a memoir chronicling his later, ambivalent feelings about his work as a photographic journalist during wartime. Photographs can be powerful in a way text is not, but they do not mean the viewer does not have to think about they, to fully understand them.