Today’s discussion of the televisual portray and construction of a Chechen national identity through the coverage and non-coverage of the Chechen Wars by various international and national news outlets reminded me of slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s book, "A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya." Politkovskaya’s expansive, on-the-ground reporting in Chechnya starkly portrays the unimaginable horrors of the wars and their human toll. Her chilling accounts offer glimpses into the suffering experienced by all sides in the multi-faceted conflict—accounts especially unique in the tightly Kremlin-controlled Russian news media environment. In the context of our conversation, the most striking facet of Politkovskaya’s reporting in the book is her description of how these distant wars are continually mis-portrayed and manipulated in the Russian news cycle and how such constructed, selective and government-approved accounts shape the general Russia public’s understanding of the conflict and, more broadly, the national psyche, especially in their disjointed application as images and concepts onto the lived experiences of civilians and combatants directly involved in the wars.
So, if you’re in need of a depressing read, I highly recommend it. Also, if you'd like more information on her life and work, a good, but rather morbid, place to start is her Economist obituary.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Cannibalistic Gaze of the Camera
In the documentary Cannibal Tours, photography and the act of photographing operate as the key illustrative displays of economic imbalance and the skewed social politics of “primitive” tourism. The camera and its associated operations and social actions are the primary loci of misunderstanding between such a bizarre and haphazard meeting of Western tourists and the indigenous village residents along the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea.
Like their missionary and colonial predecessors, the Western tourists primarily come and take from the locals without engaging in any beneficial reciprocal acts. Where the colonialists pillaged sacred sites and imposed new cultural and social structures of control, their descendents now come to gawk and take photographs. The incessant shutterbugs featured in the documentary roam the villages in a manner more reminiscent of a trip to the natural history museum, or, rather, some natural history based theme park than a remote village in a far off land. They behave in a manner that perfectly visualizes Susan Sontag’s declaration in On Photography that travel, in the age on the camera, becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.“ The village residents are treated as if they are on display, as if they are mere props in some fantastical play. As they are photographed, and, in turn, catalogued and collected by the gaze of the tourist, a casual violence is perpetrated against the reluctant indigenous subject.
Tellingly, if ironically, it is the gaze of the documentarian’s camera that attempts to problematize the disturbing relationship between the Western tourists and the people of the Sepik River. In a documentary devoid of aural narration, the camera of the documentary crew points, rather cruelly, at the Western subjects that share in its visual tradition. Through its investigative gaze and narrative construction it seeks to illustrate the cultural disparities that exist and are exacerbated by such sociocultural exchanges. Yet while attempting to gesture at some notion of photographic veracity and objectivity, the documentary ultimately only points at and reinforces the medium’s inherent tendency and affinity for identity construction by way of the limitations of the picture’s frame.
Like their missionary and colonial predecessors, the Western tourists primarily come and take from the locals without engaging in any beneficial reciprocal acts. Where the colonialists pillaged sacred sites and imposed new cultural and social structures of control, their descendents now come to gawk and take photographs. The incessant shutterbugs featured in the documentary roam the villages in a manner more reminiscent of a trip to the natural history museum, or, rather, some natural history based theme park than a remote village in a far off land. They behave in a manner that perfectly visualizes Susan Sontag’s declaration in On Photography that travel, in the age on the camera, becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.“ The village residents are treated as if they are on display, as if they are mere props in some fantastical play. As they are photographed, and, in turn, catalogued and collected by the gaze of the tourist, a casual violence is perpetrated against the reluctant indigenous subject.
Tellingly, if ironically, it is the gaze of the documentarian’s camera that attempts to problematize the disturbing relationship between the Western tourists and the people of the Sepik River. In a documentary devoid of aural narration, the camera of the documentary crew points, rather cruelly, at the Western subjects that share in its visual tradition. Through its investigative gaze and narrative construction it seeks to illustrate the cultural disparities that exist and are exacerbated by such sociocultural exchanges. Yet while attempting to gesture at some notion of photographic veracity and objectivity, the documentary ultimately only points at and reinforces the medium’s inherent tendency and affinity for identity construction by way of the limitations of the picture’s frame.
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