I took a photography course in high school. One of the assignments was a portrait series. All photos were supposed to be of the same person, but in different settings and perspectives. I chose my five-year-old brother, Dakota, for my subject. I followed him around with a camera I borrowed from school—down our long gravel driveway after checking the mail; near the creek by our house, where Dakota liked to go to think; into the dense woods on our family property. All of that was fine. None of it seemed exploitative.
But then Dakota got into a fight with one of our brothers and started to cry. I wanted to comfort him, but I also still needed to get a close-up photo of him, and the focused lighting of the lamp in my room would be perfect. I told Dakota to come to my room, let him lie on my pillow, adjusted the lamp and took picture after picture of his puffy, red face, adjusting the aperture between his sobs. Part of me wondered what he was feeling. He was crying, and his older sister, who was usually the first to console him after our mother, was taking pictures of him crying instead of soothing him. Did he feel he needed to keep crying for the sake of the pictures? Was he hurt that I seemed to care more about getting the perfect photo of him crying than him actually crying? I never asked, he never said. The same way I never asked myself why I could so easily turn off my concern for my own brother for the sake of “art.”
The morality of and rationale for this type of photography—that is, photography featuring people in pain—becomes more fraught when these photos aren’t meant to be art at all. In 2004, CBS published photos that members of the U.S. Army and CIA had taken of themselves committing human rights abuses against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq the year before. The photos appeared everywhere, featuring disgusting, unspeakable acts of torture and abuse against Middle Eastern men. I was disgusted, but I wasn’t surprised. War crimes are common, and the dehumanization of Middle Eastern people started well before 9/11.
I do, however, question why the soldiers took pictures of the torture and abuse they were committing. Unlike with the Vietnam War, which Sontag references in her essay, the photographers of the torture at Abu Ghraib weren’t war photographers. They were the soldiers themselves, often using personal cell phone cameras. What’s more, these soldiers were not only choosing to abuse these men; they were also choosing to document their abuse of these men, and therefore furnish the very evidence that would eventually be used against them in disciplinary procedures. But to what ends? One can hardly imagine any person looking back fondly at these photos.
Sontag writes, “There is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have.” Perhaps photography gave these American soldiers an additional layer of power over their Iraqi prisoners: the power to turn the prisoners’ pain and humiliation into images without their consent, to forever “capture” them the way the soldiers saw them—as terrorists, as less than human.
Of course, that doesn’t explain the presence of the American soldiers in the pictures, posing in photo after photo alongside the men they tortured. Which came first: the camera or the abuse? Did the camera’s presence encourage the abuse to keep happening? Did the American soldiers in a sense “perform” their violence for the camera, attempting to stage the perfect pictures of torture? How would the abuse have changed if there was no camera? Or would it have changed at all?
It’s somewhat frightening to think about the camera as intermediary. How much does the camera’s physical presence between the soldiers (the photographers) and the prisoners (the photographed) create the type of distance necessary for the soldiers to still pretend they’re good people? As if the very act of taking a photo—of viewing real life through a lens—somehow made whatever you were taking a picture of less real, less worthy of intervention or concern.
Maybe this is a version of what happened when I photographed my crying brother. Maybe there is no way to ethically photograph pain.
“Photographs can abet desire in the most direct, utilitarian way—as when someone collects photographs of anonymous examples of the desirable as an aid to masturbation….Desire has no history—at least, it is experienced in each instance as all foreground, immediacy.”
First things first: desire definitely has a history. Its history is intertwined with beauty standards that reinforce systemic oppressions—colonialism, sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia—as well as being intertwined with rape culture, or, if you prefer, a culture of non-consent. The desire of cisgendered, heterosexual white men has not only been historically used to evaluate the worth of women, two-spirit people and non-binary folks; it has also been continually wielded as a weapon against us, targeting our respective bodies with sexual and physical violence, as well as murder and genocide. The idea that desire’s “immediacy” somehow removes it from this specific, painful history is absurd. In fact, it is that very immediacy that often excuses violence against us, playing into the rhetoric that a violent man simply “couldn’t help himself” or “got caught up in the moment.”
It is with this history in mind that we should examine the rise in revenge porn and celebrity nude pic leaks, which I consider two sides of the same coin. Revenge porn is exactly what it sounds like: a man encourages a woman he’s seeing to send him nude pictures of herself. She complies. When they break up, the man posts her nudes all over the internet without her consent.
The thing is, not all revenge porn is done after a breakup. When I was in university, I sometimes hung out with a group of guys my husband had befriended. They were all traditionally nerdy: liked video games, Star Wars, comic books, etc. Of the five or six of them, my husband was the only one in a relationship. I was always uncomfortable around them. It felt to me like they didn’t see me as a person. They’d talk around me, never asking my opinion, some rarely acknowledging my presence at all. I tried telling this to my husband, but I didn’t want to alienate him from his friends. I couldn’t really put my finger on what was bothering me, anyway.
But then my husband found out that one of them had a new girlfriend and had shown the other guys her nudes. I immediately understood my discomfort. This man had been dating her for a short time and he already felt he had the right to share her body with his friends without her consent. Her body was a type of social capital for him, and sharing photos of it with his friends was a way of sharing—and flaunting—his wealth. These men were never outright rude to me when I was with them; their ignoring me wasn’t any different than what I’d expected from most men. But if I’d taken a nude photo of myself and they saw it, would they see me as even more of an object and less of a human than they already did? Would their eyes glaze over as they looked, my image joining the ever-expanding library of naked women’s images they’d catalogued in their minds? Would they tell themselves that looking at my photo was the same thing as looking at porn? At least porn stars know their photos will be looked at by strangers. At least they choose for their naked bodies to be photographed and for those photographs to be shared. Theoretically.
I thought about finding out who this man’s girlfriend was and telling her what he’d done. I knew she had a right to know who she was dealing with, to protect herself. Instead, I distanced myself from this group of men, never saying a word to anyone about their revenge-porn bonding session, making a promise to myself to not take nudes, not even for my husband—not because there is anything wrong with the photographs themselves but because you never really knew what a man would do with them, any man, even the man you trusted most in the world.
There really is no better term for it than “revenge porn”—even when the man who carries it out is still in a relationship with the woman he’s exploiting, even when he doesn’t have a reason to be enacting revenge. Every act of sharing pictures of a woman’s body without her consent is an act of revenge. As with the (often male) hatred levelled at selfies, the hatred that leads someone to turn a private photo into revenge porn is a specif
ically misogynistic type of hatred. The woman is hated for daring to make a sexual photo of herself, despite the fact that often the man she’s sending her picture to asked her to do it. The woman is hated for daring to control the way a man sees and experiences her body. For having sexual agency, for seeing herself as sexy, for having a sexuality independent of that man.
This is the same mentality that fuels the rabid demand for nude pics of celebrities. Every time a woman’s private photos are leaked without her consent, straight men rejoice at a new trove of pictures to jack off to, collectively revelling in the violation necessary for these photos to be available—the violation that makes these photos so scintillating to them in the first place. They’re sexier than the nude photos celebrities agree to pose for, or the love scenes they agree to appear in; they’re more “dangerous.” Why? Because the woman whose naked body you’re looking at did not want you to see them. The immediacy with which hacked celebrity nude pics are posted to the internet and downloaded onto millions of hard drives, regardless of the immorality of it, says more about the connections between photography, desire, history and immediacy than anything else ever could.
After all, these men simply couldn’t help themselves, could they?
“That most logical of nineteenth-century aesthetes, Mallarmé, said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”
Photos—or the possibility of photos—are everywhere today in a way they most certainly weren’t when Sontag wrote this line. Still, she seemed to anticipate the way that photographs would be used to validate people’s lives, their very existences, in a way that had, until then, been unavailable.
While preparing to write this essay, I typed this into a memo on my cell phone: “Photo essay: Are our experiences made more real when they’re witnessed?” I don’t know if, in reading and rereading Sontag or writing and rewriting this essay, I’ve come any closer to answering this question. The easy answer is no, of course not. An event is real regardless of whether it’s witnessed by anyone else. But the other answer, the more complicated answer, is yes, others witnessing an event makes it more real. People seeing something happen both validates it and corroborates it. When an event is witnessed by someone else, you don’t have to rely on your own (faulty, imperfect) memory to recall it. You can ask others about their memory of it, or—in the case of photographs—you can revisit an image in order to fill in the blanks. Ultimately, I think both of these answers are correct in different ways.
As I come to the end of this essay, though, I’ve realized that the more important questions about photography and its role in our world have very little to do with photography at all. The questions I keep coming to are questions about people, about us. Why do we need our lives to be witnessed? Why do we need to share our experiences, to have this connection to others? Why do we need to control others so badly and so completely that we will even try to control their image? Is it because we’re trying to make ourselves more real? Is it because that power—as expansive or minuscule as it may be—fills a void?
Conversely, why don’t we want to be witnessed? Why do we shrink from others’ eyes? Why do we tell ourselves we don’t deserve to be seen, on anyone’s terms, even our own?
Maybe the reason everything exists to end in a photograph is because this world isn’t equipped to offer something more meaningful: for everything to end in respect, acceptance and acknowledgement.
EXTRACTION MENTALITIES
his is a participatory essay. Think of it as a survey of sorts, or perhaps a conversation I’m trusting you to finish. The essay is done only when you consider it finished. I tried to write it without your help but, quite simply, I don’t have all the answers—even if I sometimes might imply that I do.
The way it will work is this: every so often I will stop this essay to ask you questions. I’ll leave space for you to answer. Do with that space whatever you will. Even blank spaces speak volumes.
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The most terrifying villains have always been two-dimensional. They have no complex motivations, no sympathetic backstories detailing their own personal traumas. Their inner lives are unknown, unknowable. All we know is they’re hell-bent on destruction.
Perhaps the best example of this type of villain is Michael Myers, the serial killer in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Halloween. At the age of six, Myers murders his older sister, Judith. At the age of twenty-one, he escapes a mental hospital so he can murder the first pretty, young babysitter he sees, Laurie Strode, along with every person who stands in his way. For most of the film we don’t see his face; his eyes are black pits set deep within a white, featureless mask. He’s cold, cruel, monstrous. Even demonic. When his child psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, calls Myers “pure evil,” we believe him. After all, we’ve seen no evidence to the contrary. And it would seem the filmmakers agree: in the closing credits, Myers’s character isn’t even given a human name. He’s listed only as “The Shape.”
Abusers often get talked about the same way Myers does: as though they, too, are pure evil; not humans, but human shapes. Articles on abusers will detail their manipulation tactics, or their intense, singular selfishness. You might read click-bait listicles on narcissism and sociopathy—two traits common among abusers—with ominous warnings typed out at the top of the page. “Don’t Let Yourself Get Manipulated!” they caution. “10 Red Flags That Could Save You from Getting Hurt.” As if abuse were so easy to avoid. As if all you had to do was take one look at a person, then politely decline, the way one does when a waiter accidentally brings over the wrong dish. “I’m so sorry, but that’s not what I ordered.” Send it back to the kitchen. Smile at your tablemates. Move on with your life.
I know this isn’t true. I’ve known abusers my whole life. Yet even I find myself tempted by the idea of this two-dimensional villain. Abusers aren’t friends or family members or people you love; they’re shadowy figures peeking around bushes, stalking their prey, the way Myers stalked Laurie on her way home from school. They’re not people who can support or nurture or love; they only traumatize and destroy and ruin, leaving bloodied bodies and broken psyches in their wake. Good and evil. Right and wrong. These dichotomies are seductive because they’re so simple. But that’s also why these sorts of dichotomies will never create the change we need. They’re too damn simple.
According to a 2014 survey of 2,542 women aged eighteen to thirty-five, nearly 60 percent had experienced abuse. Knowing this, can you think of members of your family or any of your friends who have been abused?
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Can you think of members of your family or any of your friends that have been accused of being abusive?
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If yes, how did you react when you found out? Are you still close with the accused abuser today?
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If no, how do you reconcile the statistics above with what you think you know about those close to you?
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Have you ever wondered why women in abusive relationships stay with their abusers?
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If your answer to the last question is “yes,” please revisit the third and fourth questions.
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My father enrolled me in a basketball league when I was in grade seven. A Catholic one, naturally. Being involved with anything Catholic helped ease my mother’s fears that my siblings and I were being morally corrupted by modern society.
Drives to basketball practice weren’t long, but they were long enough to get in some good conversation with my dad. He always seemed more approachable then. It was as if the act of driving consumed all the energy he normally required to maintain the masculine, intimidating aura he wore so well. When he was behind the wheel, he was vulnerable. When he was behind the wheel, I could be vulnerable, too.
This particular night I was having problems with my best friend and ne
xt-door neighbour, Sam. Desirability politics had shut her out of the hormone-fuelled coupling most teens think determines their worth. Beauty standards had declared Sam both fat and unattractive, so she was left to watch as brainwashed boys settled for me, her thinner, kind-of-cute-but-definitely-not-sexy friend. I can only imagine how much this got to her. A boy she had a crush on and started chatting up at a roller rink completely diverted the conversation by telling her he was interested in me. That was awkward enough, but then she pressured me to date him despite my never speaking a word to him. I was confused, but agreed, the way I agreed any time Sam asked me to do anything. Suffice it to say, our whirlwind romance didn’t last.
Throughout our friendship, Sam had a habit of implying I was ugly, or emphasizing how poor I was, or making digs at my weight that left me feeling worthless. This upset me, but I didn’t want to talk about it with my mom. She wasn’t a big fan of Sam and seemed poised to pounce on any excuse for me to cut ties with her. That left my dad and our drive to basketball practice, his eyes focused on the white lines of the street.
“I just don’t understand why she’s like this,” I said. “I don’t say anything like that to her.”
“She has an inferiority complex,” my dad replied, his voice so confident I immediately knew it must be true.
“What’s that?”
“You’re beautiful, talented and smart. She worries she’s not any of those things, so she tries to make herself feel better by tearing you down. I’ve known a lot of people like that.”
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground Page 17
