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The Civil Contract of Photography
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586 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 30, 2024
This is now the fourth book by this author I have read. She is fascinating to read. I’ve long been interested in image theory and the role photographs play in society. Here she argues that we have developed a kind of contract when it comes to photography – one in which photographs have a kind of civil meaning and ownership beyond that of what we might view as authorship in other media. And this does not only extend to copywrite per se, but more generally to how we make meaning from these artifacts.
She discusses how the Palestinians are photographed or not photographed and how this goes about reflecting their position in Israeli society as subjects, rather than citizens. She also discusses how women are treated, both in Israel and more generally, but mostly in how they are often not photographed in situations like rape. You might think this is a good thing, however, the problem is that it then works to define rape in ways that construct it as purely an act of violence against women. While this is clearly true, the difficulty is in seeking to imagine what an image of rape might look like, particularly in comparison to an image of sex or of pornography. Would you be able to pick the difference? There is a long discussion of images of sexual assault from US torture prisons in Iraq and how these were displayed on websites that were pornographic. That is, images that might not have actually been from those sites, but that were understood to have been taken in them. These were clearly being used as pornography. Forced sex was being used not only to display violence, but also as a form of erotica. This blurring of the lines is central to her discussion here.
And then the issue of Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes – where walls are destroyed so that it is possible to see into the houses – becomes parallelled with this too. Here we also have unwanted penetration, exposure, the private being made public.
She makes interesting points about Roland Barthes work on photography too. Particularly his idea of the punctum and how this is an unintended feature of a photograph that effectively takes our breath away. She is concerned that Barthes is too concerned with photographs as aesthetic, and that this undermines what might otherwise be a focus on their political force.
The question of ethics underpins her discussion. When is it alright to take a photograph? When it is alright to look at one? What rights do the people being photographed have? She has an interesting section on the young Afghan woman who was photographed in the 1970s for National Geographic and then was tracked down and photographed again years later. She talks of the effort that was made to ensure that this woman was the same woman in both photographs, and how much this effort actually cost, both in effort and in monetary terms. She links this to the US efforts to humanise women in Afghanistan to justify its war there.
Similarly, she discusses a number of photographs that have been taken of Palestinian youth interacting with Israeli defence forces. Or of Palestinian women who are forced to wait at checkpoints ensuring that they either give birth in their cars or wait while their newly born children die waiting to be processed. It would be hard to overstate the loathing this would inevitably create in the captive population.
Photographs are selective, but they are also evidence. But what they are evidence of is never fixed. I remember my brother once telling me of the ‘true story’ behind the famous photograph from the Vietnam war where a military figure puts a pistol to the head of a captured communist and pulls the trigger. But this is really the power of a caption to reorient the message of an image. Sontag talks of this at length in her book On Photography. The other aspect of this is how difficult it is, particularly in the age of the iPhone, to control photographs – despite this being the clear intent of so many repressive regimes. Just look at the Israeli murder of journalists during the current phase of their endless war against Palestinians.
She makes the point, which we are seeing played out in real time today with the destruction of Gaza, that the Palestinians have been granted bare life by the Israeli regime. This means that they are constantly on the brink of catastrophe. The slightest problem being enough to tip the scales. This is a conscious policy of the regime – something that was made all too clear at the start of the current war when Israeli ministers said that if the Palestinians wanted to be treated like animals, they would be – no water, no food, no medicine, etc. The horrific stories of torture, rape and various humiliations, beyond the massacre of children, women and old people, has been a constant theme, even if one that hardly registers in the Western media. The horror story of a man having a mobile phone inserted into his anus by soldiers who stood around him laughing as they dialled the number and then ruptured his bowel by inserting a stick into him was only made more horrific by the protests in support of the barbarians who committed these acts by members of the Israeli public and government. We only know of this due to the actions of a ‘traitor’ who released footage of it occurring. I can only assume the people of Israel have decided to renounce their humanity in support of the actions of these fanatics. It is something I never thought I would ever witness. But as I now say repeatedly – listen to the accusations made by people, and assume those accusations are in fact confessions.
The author has a keen eye and presents her discussion with dispassion and insight. You will come away from this book with a clearer understanding of the nature of photography and the role it plays in our society.
She discusses how the Palestinians are photographed or not photographed and how this goes about reflecting their position in Israeli society as subjects, rather than citizens. She also discusses how women are treated, both in Israel and more generally, but mostly in how they are often not photographed in situations like rape. You might think this is a good thing, however, the problem is that it then works to define rape in ways that construct it as purely an act of violence against women. While this is clearly true, the difficulty is in seeking to imagine what an image of rape might look like, particularly in comparison to an image of sex or of pornography. Would you be able to pick the difference? There is a long discussion of images of sexual assault from US torture prisons in Iraq and how these were displayed on websites that were pornographic. That is, images that might not have actually been from those sites, but that were understood to have been taken in them. These were clearly being used as pornography. Forced sex was being used not only to display violence, but also as a form of erotica. This blurring of the lines is central to her discussion here.
And then the issue of Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes – where walls are destroyed so that it is possible to see into the houses – becomes parallelled with this too. Here we also have unwanted penetration, exposure, the private being made public.
She makes interesting points about Roland Barthes work on photography too. Particularly his idea of the punctum and how this is an unintended feature of a photograph that effectively takes our breath away. She is concerned that Barthes is too concerned with photographs as aesthetic, and that this undermines what might otherwise be a focus on their political force.
The question of ethics underpins her discussion. When is it alright to take a photograph? When it is alright to look at one? What rights do the people being photographed have? She has an interesting section on the young Afghan woman who was photographed in the 1970s for National Geographic and then was tracked down and photographed again years later. She talks of the effort that was made to ensure that this woman was the same woman in both photographs, and how much this effort actually cost, both in effort and in monetary terms. She links this to the US efforts to humanise women in Afghanistan to justify its war there.
Similarly, she discusses a number of photographs that have been taken of Palestinian youth interacting with Israeli defence forces. Or of Palestinian women who are forced to wait at checkpoints ensuring that they either give birth in their cars or wait while their newly born children die waiting to be processed. It would be hard to overstate the loathing this would inevitably create in the captive population.
Photographs are selective, but they are also evidence. But what they are evidence of is never fixed. I remember my brother once telling me of the ‘true story’ behind the famous photograph from the Vietnam war where a military figure puts a pistol to the head of a captured communist and pulls the trigger. But this is really the power of a caption to reorient the message of an image. Sontag talks of this at length in her book On Photography. The other aspect of this is how difficult it is, particularly in the age of the iPhone, to control photographs – despite this being the clear intent of so many repressive regimes. Just look at the Israeli murder of journalists during the current phase of their endless war against Palestinians.
She makes the point, which we are seeing played out in real time today with the destruction of Gaza, that the Palestinians have been granted bare life by the Israeli regime. This means that they are constantly on the brink of catastrophe. The slightest problem being enough to tip the scales. This is a conscious policy of the regime – something that was made all too clear at the start of the current war when Israeli ministers said that if the Palestinians wanted to be treated like animals, they would be – no water, no food, no medicine, etc. The horrific stories of torture, rape and various humiliations, beyond the massacre of children, women and old people, has been a constant theme, even if one that hardly registers in the Western media. The horror story of a man having a mobile phone inserted into his anus by soldiers who stood around him laughing as they dialled the number and then ruptured his bowel by inserting a stick into him was only made more horrific by the protests in support of the barbarians who committed these acts by members of the Israeli public and government. We only know of this due to the actions of a ‘traitor’ who released footage of it occurring. I can only assume the people of Israel have decided to renounce their humanity in support of the actions of these fanatics. It is something I never thought I would ever witness. But as I now say repeatedly – listen to the accusations made by people, and assume those accusations are in fact confessions.
The author has a keen eye and presents her discussion with dispassion and insight. You will come away from this book with a clearer understanding of the nature of photography and the role it plays in our society.
September 29, 2018
mucho de lo que habla la autora en este libro suena mas a lo que ella quiere que la foto signifique y no lo que en realidad puede comunicar ... hay ocasiones en que la fotografia claramente nos guia hacia una lectura y ella lo describe ... pero despues ella nos dice que eso "puede" significar lo que ella quiere que signifique ... para ella significa eso porque ella conoce el contexto .. pero cuando no hay contexto y cuando necesitamos un texto para explicar una situacion puntual de lo que hablamos no es de fotografia sino de representacion visual tal vez ... testimonio visual puede ser .. pero es mas bien una composicion entre foto y texto .. y no un lenguaje claro fotografico...
es interesante el texto ... pero en querer hacer a la fotografia participe de una forma de activismo deja algunos huecos en su forma de leer imagenes que creo que no funcionan tan bien ...
es interesante el texto ... pero en querer hacer a la fotografia participe de una forma de activismo deja algunos huecos en su forma de leer imagenes que creo que no funcionan tan bien ...
Read
July 25, 2020Only read the introduction and chapter five, called “Has anyone ever seen a photograph of a rape?”
I appreciate how well written and documented it was, and the chapter about the visibility of rape in modern culture was really eye opening (and horrifying).
Azoulay talks about this chapter briefly in the introduction:
“When the dimensions of rape relative to all women in the world emerge, rape appears as a catastrophe befalling a specific population, and its incidence indicates that the civil status of the population vulnerable to this type of injury is still impaired. The chapter points out that this is the only kind of catastrophe with no visibility in the public discourse and attempts to understand the absence of pictures of rape as part of what leaves the dimensions of this catastrophe unchanged.”
I’d really like to read the whole book some day, if I can get a copy.
I appreciate how well written and documented it was, and the chapter about the visibility of rape in modern culture was really eye opening (and horrifying).
Azoulay talks about this chapter briefly in the introduction:
“When the dimensions of rape relative to all women in the world emerge, rape appears as a catastrophe befalling a specific population, and its incidence indicates that the civil status of the population vulnerable to this type of injury is still impaired. The chapter points out that this is the only kind of catastrophe with no visibility in the public discourse and attempts to understand the absence of pictures of rape as part of what leaves the dimensions of this catastrophe unchanged.”
I’d really like to read the whole book some day, if I can get a copy.
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September 23, 2012Awesome...
December 28, 2020
I did a lot of work with and around photography in my M.A. and although Visual Culture isn't my beat per se, I thought I understood the shape of it at least. I love Sontag,, after all. But no. This book completely upended a number of my pretty closely held beliefs. It will take 2-3 more readings to fully soak it in, I bet, and I can't wait. There is so much here.
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May 29, 2025i said i read this but actually i'll never finish it because it's the most confusing thing i've ever read <3
January 7, 2020
An urgent theorization of violent photography that challenges the status quo established by Barthes and Sontag. Could have been edited down a sizable amount though, as Azoulay tends to be redundant for what seems to be the sake of convincing the reader despite already establishing such a strong case.
Would recommend Azoulay's online series of essays Unlearning Decisive Moments in Photography if one does not want to read 600+ pages of theory.
Would recommend Azoulay's online series of essays Unlearning Decisive Moments in Photography if one does not want to read 600+ pages of theory.
June 5, 2018
Dense but informative text using the civil contract of photography to call for a global citizenry—that is disconnected from a sovereign and that knows no borders—where we assume responsibility for each other and protecting each other from harm.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews