Beyond Abu Ghraib: War trophy photography and commemorative violence

The photographs from the Abu Ghraib scandal are horrific, but they are also understandable. Simply put, the Abu Ghraib photos are purposeful compositions that highlight victory over the enemy Other in war. The photos illustrate sexual and racial violence, founded upon postcolonial narratives, but this is only a starting point for their significance. I address how meaning is made for the U.S. military personnel who took photographs of naked Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, by looking backward to soldiers’ photography from WWI and II, and by considering soldiers’ online sharing of photographs in the present, examining roughly fifty photos total. The relationships between photographic materiality, emotional and gestural communication, and the production of cultural memory, disseminated via networked circulation, all shape how soldiers’ wartime photographs come to be regarded. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this research draws upon war photography; visual culture and communication; sociology of groups and ritual; sociology of emotion; combat histories; memory studies; and online photo sharing practices. In so considering, the Abu Ghraib photos are not unique, and are instead grouped within the greater concept of the “war trophy.” I expand on this concept by defining “war trophy photography” as the entwined practices of war photography and trophy collection, rooted in ritual and group solidification. Staged to depict the violent conquering of the enemy, I argue that war trophy photography recognizes war efforts through the construction of a visual record, one that reproduces relations of dominance and submission. I call this representation “commemorative violence,” a central concept I develop to define the war trophy photograph. In addition to grounding the Abu Ghraib photos historically, I review their visual semiotic, cultural significance, such as with the “Doing a Lynndie” meme, which features civilians gesturing in thumbs-up toward a downtrodden individual, copying the same gesture as often used in the images from Abu Ghraib, and the now defunct site “Now That’s Fucked Up,” which briefly allowed soldiers in 2005 to trade gruesome war trophy pictures for pornography. The conclusion reflects on war trophy photography with the topical consideration of drones, ultimately suggesting that drone warfare photos are expressionless because of the overt absence of people.

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Festivals as Archives: Collective Memory and LGBTQ Festivals’ Temporality

LGBTQ Film Festivals ◽

10.5117/9789463728409_ch04 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Antoine Damiens

Keyword(s):

Collective Memory ◽

Cultural Memory ◽

Gay And Lesbian ◽

Ideal Space ◽

Visual History

Chapter 4 pays attention to LGBTQ festivals’ visual productions and curatorial practices. As events dedicated to the screening of sexual images, LGBTQ festivals are enmeshed with the accumulation of temporality and affects. As such, their film selection is akin to a collage or a juxtaposition of films, each with a peculiar relationship to history. Through their selections and visual productions, festivals make time ‘matter’: they constitute a virtual archive and entail a particular type of relationship with gay and lesbian visual history. In positing that festivals constitute an ideal space for theorizing gay and lesbian spectatorship, Chapter 4 argues that LGBTQ festivals exemplify some of the modalities through which we access, visually, gay and lesbian cultural memory.

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What remains of Abu Ghraib?: digital photography and cultural memory

Visual Studies ◽

10.1080/1472586x.2015.1128844 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 22-33 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joey Brooke Jakob

Keyword(s):

Cultural Memory ◽

Digital Photography ◽

Abu Ghraib

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The second life of Kowloon Walled City: Crime, media and cultural memory

Crime Media Culture An International Journal ◽

10.1177/1741659017703681 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 217-234 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Alistair Fraser ◽

Eva Cheuk-Yin Li

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Second Life ◽

Cultural Memory ◽

Living Conditions ◽

Postwar Period ◽

British Colonialism ◽

Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽

Successive Generations ◽

Visual History

Kowloon Walled City (hereafter KWC or Walled City), Hong Kong has been described as ‘one of history’s great anomalies’. The territory remained under Chinese rule throughout the period of British colonialism, with neither jurisdiction wishing to take active responsibility for its administration. In the postwar period, the area became notorious for vice, drugs and unsanitary living conditions, yet also attracted the attention of artists, photographers and writers, who viewed it as an instance of anarchic urbanism. Despite its demolition in 1993, KWC has continued to capture the imaginations of successive generations across Asia. Drawing on data from an oral and visual history project on the enclave, alongside images, interviews and observations regarding the ‘second life’ of KWC, this article will trace the unique flow of meanings and reimaginings that KWC has inspired. The article will locate the peculiar collisions of crime and consumerism prompted by KWC within the broader contexts in which they are embedded, seeking out a new interdisciplinary perspective that attends to the internecine spaces of crime, media and culture in contemporary Asian societies.

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Warring Visions

10.1215/9781478012917 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Thy Phu

Keyword(s):

Vietnam War ◽

Family Life ◽

War Photography ◽

South Vietnam ◽

History Of ◽

International Audience ◽

The Vietnam War ◽

North Vietnam ◽

Vietnamese Diaspora ◽

Visual History

In Warring Visions, Thy Phu explores photography from dispersed communities throughout Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora, both during and after the Vietnam War, to complicate narratives of conflict and memory. While the visual history of the Vietnam War has been dominated by American documentaries and war photography, Phu turns to photographs circulated by the Vietnamese themselves, capturing a range of subjects, occasions, and perspectives. Phu's concept of warring visions refers to contrasts in the use of war photos in North Vietnam, which highlighted national liberation and aligned themselves with an international audience, and those in South Vietnam, which focused on family and everyday survival. Phu also uses warring visions to enlarge the category of war photography, a genre that usually consists of images illustrating the immediacy of combat and the spectacle of violence, pain, and wounded bodies. She pushes this genre beyond such definitions by analyzing pictures of family life, weddings, and other quotidian scenes of life during the war. Phu thus expands our understanding of how war is waged, experienced, and resolved.

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Abu Ghraib and the commemorative violence of war trophy photography

10.32920/ryerson.14645580 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Joey Brooke Jakob ◽

Paul S. Moore

Keyword(s):

Interdisciplinary Approach ◽

Racial Violence ◽

Abu Ghraib ◽

Cultural Significance ◽

War Photography ◽

Photo Sharing ◽

Starting Point ◽

Sociology Of Emotion ◽

Drone Warfare ◽

Visual Record

The photographs from the Abu Ghraib scandal are horrific, but they are also understandable. Simply put, the Abu Ghraib photos are purposeful compositions that highlight victory over the enemy Other in war. The photos illustrate sexual and racial violence, founded upon postcolonial narratives, but this is only a starting point for their significance. I address how meaning is made for the U.S. military personnel who took photographs of naked Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, by looking backward to soldiers’ photography from WWI and II, and by considering soldiers’ online sharing of photographs in the present, examining roughly fifty photos total. The relationships between photographic materiality, emotional and gestural communication, and the production of cultural memory, disseminated via networked circulation, all shape how soldiers’ wartime photographs come to be regarded. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this research draws upon war photography; visual culture and communication; sociology of groups and ritual; sociology of emotion; combat histories; memory studies; and online photo sharing practices. In so considering, the Abu Ghraib photos are not unique, and are instead grouped within the greater concept of the “war trophy.” I expand on this concept by defining “war trophy photography” as the entwined practices of war photography and trophy collection, rooted in ritual and group solidification. Staged to depict the violent conquering of the enemy, I argue that war trophy photography recognizes war efforts through the construction of a visual record, one that reproduces relations of dominance and submission. I call this representation “commemorative violence,” a central concept I develop to define the war trophy photograph. In addition to grounding the Abu Ghraib photos historically, I review their visual semiotic, cultural significance, such as with the “Doing a Lynndie” meme, which features civilians gesturing in thumbs-up toward a downtrodden individual, copying the same gesture as often used in the images from Abu Ghraib, and the now defunct site “Now That’s Fucked Up,” which briefly allowed soldiers in 2005 to trade gruesome war trophy pictures for pornography. The conclusion reflects on war trophy photography with the topical consideration of drones, ultimately suggesting that drone warfare photos are expressionless because of the overt absence of people.

Download Full-text