“The rush of moral indignation that often accompanies the encounter with other graphic pictures of atrocities may be narcissistically satisfying, but it may also free us from the responsibility of placing our own experiences in relation to something that remains, finally, incomprehensible.”
–Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: the Photography of Trauma
Local inhabitants tour Buchenwald
Mikael Levin, Untitled (from War Story, Buchenwald, 1995)
I snagged the opening quote from Kevin Hamilton’s article Absence in Common: An Operator for the Inoperative Community, which argues for a “phenomenology of acknowledged absence” based largely on Nancy’s senses of community, reflexivity and difference.
This got me thinking about the recent news photos from Lebanon. News editors and forum members reject photos that make present something that was absent as images-that-lie. But what kind of presence do they want?
When I look at the photos above taken during the liberation of Buchenwald I’m shocked and appalled (who wouldn’t be?, we ask indignantly) but how am I bound to these people? What truth do they – the pictures and people – offer me? Do I know what it’s like to witness such things? No. But the pictures make it seem so real, they encourage me to serve as witness. To stand beside these people in solidarity, in community, together-as-one in truth. But isn’t that impossible?
As Nancy would have it, there is no togetherness in our being-together. Those stories are not my life, my experiences, my truths. If I ignore that, how can I recognise all the ways in which our differences help shape these events and interactions? When I look at the third photo above it hits me like a ton of bricks: there’s a huge gap between me and Buchenwald. I may know it, but I can’t see it or touch it. The photo encourages me to recognise my position as outsider, connected but not in-common – which also allows me to re-imagine community and action from a place of hope rather than violence and trauma.