Dr.+A+Wk+12

Wk 12 I started this last iteration of my Tibet prezi by considering these two questions:


 * What does it take to stand by and watch a man run in front of you burning to death?
 * What does it take to look at a photograph of a man burning to death?

As I worked on it over two day, I had these thoughts:


 * Sunday 15/04/12: ** So far my prezi is a report on the action of the photographer and does not get to the second question. What do I find provocative or not about such images? I do set up the rhetorical situation for the photograph and describe the denotative messages. This question occurs to me both as rhetor and audience: What do I do with the fact that the NYT put it on the 4th page and not on the front page? As a comfortable 1st world reader of the Times, I just sit back and watch images of people like this as they kill themselves. I think about Sontag's camera as a source of aggression. And Berger's notion that photographers are part of an ideological struggle--in the case between China and Tibet (and the rest of the world).

The photographer’s statement of emotionless action ("[N]o emotion, no feeling, no second thoughts" --Swarup) translates the photograph into something new for the viewer, me--de-familiarizes it. Is this concession by the photographer, his admission of helplessness, a plea from a guilty man for understanding? He goes on to say ( don't quote it) how concerned he was for the man. He is not someone who takes pictures of ghoulish acts—see his street photographs. He was also a victim of the man’s act. The fact that he did not act with sensible responsibility but did his job says something. But what? That we’ve made our jobs more important than the lives of others.

The American photographer ([|NPR story]) says there is always the fear and the looking through the lens helps you get through the fear. But Swarup was not in a war zone yet the fear or the danger or the shock led him to do what he would normally do to take control of the situation. He is a photographer so he takes photos and leaves the rest of us to figure them out later. His act of photography was a reaction and it produced an artifact (the photograph) that we all have to come to terms with.

We have to find some way to deal with our shock. And the NYT feared for what we might do (so controled the rhetorical situation) which was indicated by the placement of the photograph in the print edition and the responses on their blog where people either said “too bad”, made a joke, turned ideological, or rejected the image outright.

We might try to consider what it was that this man did to sacrifice himself. He had nothing more to lose and for him a lot to gain in getting people to become aware if only for a moment the trouble Tibetans are in vis a vis China. Did it change anyone’s mind? China considers these self-immolations to be terrorist acts similar to suicide bombings (see Berger's photographs as part of the ideological struggle). But is there a place for rational thought or do we need unbridled sacrifice and to what god? And how can I make this into a visual argument?


 * Monday 16/04/12: ** I start with myself as viewer, introduce the photograph, interpret it--focus on the photographer and his ethical challenge including the effects of the camera/aggression and photography/ideology--and I end by going back through myself (figuratively) to the efficacy of sacrifice and spectatorship (Blakesly & Burke) to the salvation there is in work that tries to do the right thing.