Death, lamentation and the photographic representation of the Other during the Second Iraq War in Greek newspapers

Abstract

• This article is part of a wider research project on the cultural and political significance of the photographic representations of suffering during the Second Iraq War (2003) in Greek newspapers. The paper examines in detail a particular case study — the `wailing father' photographs — carrying out a socio-semiotic analysis of the signifying practices of news reporting and exploring the visual construction of `death' and `lamentation', accounting for the complex articulation between the particular social/cultural context and the processes of meaning construction. More specifically, the aim of the article is to study the role of the representation of death and grief in war; firstly as a rhetorical tool wielded by the Greek press to support its political and moral stance against the Second Iraq War, and, secondly as a hegemonic device that creates an ambivalent divide between `us' (the `implied readers' identifying with the Western moral virtues of `civilised' humanity) and `them' (the social groups being represented, the `Non-Western World') along the lines of Orientalist bipolar oppositions. The article concludes that the `wailing father' photographs, as a deeply complex mixture of voyeurism, objectification, affective participation, human brotherhood, moral indifference, imaginative compassion, passivity and fatalism, seem to reproduce, in all their confusion, the Western superiority and the Orientalist imagery, but also the moral and political failure to react over suffering and war. •

The Role of the Photograph in the Application of Forensic Anthropology and the Interpretation of Clandestine Scenes of Crime

“…Crime scene photography is a significant contributor to these offerings. Furthermore, it has long been argued that seeing images of death threatens the rationality and social management of modernity unless those dying are deemed "foreign" (Konstantinidou, 2007) …”

“…"… the theory of the photograph as an analogue of reality has been abandoned … the common-sense belief in the photograph as a picture of objective reality … as a form of eyewitnessing remains deeply embedded" (Konstantinidou, 2007;148) Even earlier, Conrad (1957) noted, at the time of the emergence of crime scene photography, that although black and white photography was accepted as if it were the real scene, it is actually a two-dimensional, abstract medium. He later went on to argue:…”

“…Rowe (1983) discusses the lengths that experts went to prove that a number of images of the carnage of the American Civil War were staged or creatively edited (including a series of famous shots of Gettysburg and a series by George N. Bernard). Konstantinidou (2007) argues that the fakery of photographs representing conflicts can even be extended to include the biased nature of the employment of some photographs, whether this is in their framing or their usage in the media. In terms of deployment in the printed media, it can be argued that any perceived objectivity (or objective meaning) that a photograph may have, is negated when framed with text , and placed within the overall layout of the media presentation (such as a newspaper, magazine or website) (Konstantinidou, 2007).…”

“…Konstantinidou (2007) argues that the fakery of photographs representing conflicts can even be extended to include the biased nature of the employment of some photographs, whether this is in their framing or their usage in the media. In terms of deployment in the printed media, it can be argued that any perceived objectivity (or objective meaning) that a photograph may have, is negated when framed with text , and placed within the overall layout of the media presentation (such as a newspaper, magazine or website) (Konstantinidou, 2007). The first stage in creating this bias is by simple censorship of which photographs are allowed in the media; for example, the photographs vetted by the Office of War Information in the Second…”

The Local Relevance of Global Suffering: Articulations of Identities and Cosmopolitanism in Television News Discourses on Distant Suffering

“…In other words, the foreign event was undeniably domesticated and hence represented as relevant. This particular journalistic focus could moreover be interpreted as a means of identifying with the western moral discourse of 'civilised' humanity and compassion towards the distant victims (Konstantinidou 2007). A second difference is situated at the level of emotional distance constructed by the news narratives.…”