Images of suffering and human rights

Cameras hanging from a tree in Khe Sanh During the Vietnam War, 7th April 1968. 

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Human rights and photography have a long history. Made ever more complicated by photography’s close relationship with death and war, discussion of images depicting the pain and suffering of human beings ought to acknowledge the art form’s relationship with human rights. This is true both in the instances where legislation addresses this complex relationship, and in the cases where human rights law is severely lacking. Most recently, discourse on the power of photography has surfaced into mainstream media with regards to the posting of images of prisoners of war online. One such image was taken in Iraq, in a prisoner of war camp for prisoners captured by US soldiers near Najaf in Iraq in March 2003. A man sits on the ground with a black bag over his head,  He holds a small child at his side and his hand is on the child’s forehead. The child’s face is uncovered, visible through barbed wire. Discussions of images of prisoners of war have recently turned to photographs depicting Russian prisoners of war shared on social media sites. Whilst the legal infrastructure surrounding images is not always implemented, or even available, in the case of the dissemination of photographs of prisoners of war, an international legal framework is present. In Gaza today, the genocide of Palestinians has been documented widely on social media sites, and there has been little discussion of the rights of those portrayed or those publishing these images. Beyond this, photographic evidence has been part of an increasing global awareness of the situation ‘on-the-ground’ when not published in mainstream news media. The international legal framework, then, is severely lacking. 

Cases of Russian, American and Iraqi soldiers detained as prisoners of war are some of the few instances of conflict photography in which international legal institutions have provided guidance. The Geneva Convention promises the protection of the rights of prisoners of war.  Whilst not explicitly prohibiting the photographing of prisoners of war, the Geneva Convention outlines that photography of detainees and the publication of these images should be protected from public curiosity. Recognition of the subjects in the image, by name or by text, is not permitted by the Geneva Conventions’ 13th Article. Beyond this, the convention prohibits the publication of images of prisoners of war with the ‘intention to humiliate.’ The US Department of Defense, in a case that received significant media attention, ruled against the airing of footage of American prisoners of war in Iraq following the publication of the images by Al Jazeera in March 2003. Most mainstream television networks in the United States were in possession of the video footage and photographs of American detainees following its airing on Iraqi television. Some footage named prisoners of war and others showed a detainee deceased, publicising these videos and images before press conferences could inform family members. While this case is not the first, it raised difficult questions for American television stations on the responsibility to publish during conflict, particularly when local broadcasters had published the footage already. Al Jazeera was found, by the US Defense Department, to have violated the rights of those prisoners visible and named in the footage. The legal frameworks at use here, both of the Geneva Convention and as ruled by the US Department of Defense, demonstrate a context in which international laws protect prisoners of war from published photographs. Even within this context however, the specific description of active ‘conflict’ and what it may mean to be ‘at war’ means that some cases may not see protection by the formal articles of the Geneva Convention. Beyond this there are several contexts, during and separate to ongoing conflict, in which images portraying the suffering of others neglect the rights of those portrayed in a number of very significant ways. 

When we consider images of suffering that record times of conflict and upheaval, it is important to acknowledge the relationships between the photographer, photographed, and viewer – be they intentional or not. Susan Sontag’s writing, Regarding the Pain of Others, is one of the works that has shaped perceptions of imagery, narrative, and rights today. The relationship between the above identified key actors in the production, reception, and subsequent reproduction of photographic imagery, appears to fluctuate depending on the intended audience and the type of suffering it depicts. Sontag, in an article titled ‘Looking At War’ written for The New Yorker, discusses the ways in which photography (often problematically) is used in times of conflict in order to elicit various responses:

Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses: a call for peace; a cry for revenge; or simply the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information, that terrible things happen.

In the context of conflicts ‘happening elsewhere’, the awareness produced by images is ‘something constructed.’ In her argument in Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag defines her analysis through an understanding of photographic depictions of pain and injustice to have the potential to be exploitative. This understands not only there to be an inherently unequal relationship between photographer and photographed, but also between the photographed and viewing audience. Most explicitly in the context of suffering, pain, and especially war: the viewing audience may not take pleasure in the images, but consumes them from a place of safety. The construction of a photographed record is important because it is not directed at particular audiences through tone, vocabulary or subject matter, but is - also in its intention - directed at all because of its unified language. Often taken as representative of a desirable form of true depiction of a person, a place, or a violent conflict, photography has acted as a maxim: a stand-in for truth. Unlike written accounts of historical events, which serve to record these events, photography has come to define the events it depicts. The above, as stand-alone uses and behaviours of photography, appear to provide an opportunity for an expansion of awareness, and in many photojournalists, has elicited a feeling of responsibility to record, depict, and share a form of suffering that would otherwise remain locally contained. The central danger, however, arises through (a) the assumption that photographed footage is objective and (b) that photography is, however,  inherently and always subjective. Sontag states: 

This sleight of hand allows photographs to be both objective record and personal testimony, both a faithful copy or transcription of an actual moment of reality and an interpretation of that reality – a feat literature has long aspired to but could never attain in this literal sense.

The photograph, whilst assumed to be an objective medium through which to report complex and painful realities, becomes subjective through the processes that define its production and reception. What is included or excluded may play an active role in the perception of an image. Sontag understands there to be a duality pre-existent within photography: an inherent objectivity (because a photograph is an actual record of an event), and a subjectivity often forgotten during our reception of photographic images (established by the photographer, by us as viewers, and by the publication of these images). Photographic record is able to shape collective memories of certain historical events and can be used and reused in order to shape narratives and inform opinions. 

Sontag thus identifies the potential conceptual discontent in arguing that photography is entirely objective. Where the presence of an image has a particular reception, so too does its absence. A form of cherry-picking is central to the ways in which images – hailed to be objective depictions of real-life happenings – are presented in news media and particularly online. These processes shape collective memories of an event that is informed by the medium presupposed to embody objective record. Part of such processes, in times of conflict and human rights violations, is an effort to maintain reporting assumed to be objective in order to garner support. These depictions, taken to be objective records by the audience, are filtered and selected as written or verbal testimony may be too. 

Further, are representations of pain and suffering contributing to the suffering of a group or an individual? In the existence of the image itself, and in the process of taking the photograph, is there a chance the image itself becomes a source of suffering? Is it at all ethical to portray people experiencing suffering, conflict, and genocide and can we ever justify doing so? 

The intersection between photography’s relationship with arts and beauty and objective reporting of war seems also to introduce a few issues: what may be the lasting impacts of viewing images of pain and suffering as simultaneously beautiful or of aesthetic merit? Of course, written, painted, and photographed history has long attempted to merge the concepts of beauty and pain. There have always been attempts to record this notion - oil paintings of violent battle scenes, for example. Sontag highlights the ways in which human interest in the suffering of others, observed in images, is shaped by a desire for ‘the photographer to be a spy in the house of love and of death’ and an interest in viewing unfiltered injustice. She states: 

What is odd is not that so many of the most iconic news photos of the past, including some of the best-remembered pictures from the Second World War, appear to have been staged. It is that we are surprised to learn they are staged, and always disappointed.

The case of realistic, intimate, portrayal through digital photography raises some important questions about ethics and once more, the relationships that exist between photographer, photographed, and the viewing audience. The beauty in photography, then, seems to come from a desire in the audience to view a captured moment of conflict, or of violence: this is why staged images do not satisfy this demand. 

The relationship between human rights and photography in times of conflict is defined by a perceived duty to share the pain of others and has become increasingly important within the context of social media. In their paper ‘Picturing Rights, Judging Wrongs,’ Austin Dilley discusses the question: ‘What does it mean to picture human rights?’ The United Nations has recorded human rights in investigations of these crimes, and photography has been essential to collecting evidence that facilitates rights-protecting prosecutions. The photography of rights and violations thereof present a central challenge: that they are not tangible things that we can hold in our hands. How atrocities may be photographed and shared, then, is shaped by a ‘painful proximity’ to atrocity and the loss of human life. Photography depicting pain has often become essential and can ‘become the object of our collective reflection, empathetic emotions, and transformative action.’ Recording through imagery and photographs thus has an incredibly valuable role to play in cases of conflict, and those journalists who strive to document human injustices demonstrate immense bravery in photography and publication. Considering the protection of human rights and photography is immensely complex. Those who are photographed and whose images become available for public consumption must see their rights protected. Photography, however, also plays an invaluable role in providing voice to those who have been made voiceless by conflict, violence, and human rights abuses. Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Shbair photographed people returning to their destroyed homes in Gaza in 2021. She stated: 

I feel a responsibility to make the voices of the people around me heard, and their images visible.

The images of injustice, of pain, and of suffering, seem sometimes to walk the fine line between empowerment and objectification. The photography that emerges from conflict shapes our views and our understandings of what we do not experience first-hand. What Sontag argued in 2003, about the imbalanced relationships that exist between photographer, photographed and viewer of images of suffering remains true two decades later. To place upon photographers, who witness the suffering – and in the case of Gaza today, who suffer too – the responsibility to report, to convince viewers of their pain, is something that ought to be discussed in formal circles of human rights institutions. 

Recognising the inherent dilemmas for human rights, most often exacerbated by imbalances in power between photographers, photographed individuals, and viewers is important. It is possible to place value on the recording of suffering and the impact it may have on conflict resolution and human rights protection in future, as well as to acknowledge the difficult relationship that such images have with consent, ethics, and how we - as viewers - consume these images. In contexts where ‘shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value,’ it is essential to protect the rights of those portrayed in the images we consume every day, and to consume images of violence with more consideration for the contexts in which they emerge. 

Bibliography

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———. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Penguin Books Ltd.