The ethics of the image
Spring has sprung! The birds are in the trees! The bees are buzzing around the lavender plant! The doonas have been kicked off, the bogans up the back are walking around without any clothes on, and I’m going to talk about the Holocaust.
I actually am.
See, I’ve had something on my mind for a couple of weeks now. Something happened to me. I had one of those unpleasant inverse lightbulb moments where instead of everything being illuminated by some kind of miraculous epiphany, suddenly the world took on a slightly more unpleasant shade; it lost a little bit more of its sparkle, I lost a little bit more of my faith in people, and, regretfully, in those in particular who inhabit the ‘Art World’.
So, tell me: is art subject to ethics? Are there some things that are too sacred to fall within the scope of art’s gaze, or does the very nature of art preclude limitations on its purview?
Certainly, you CAN make art out of anything. But should you?
That is the question.
In 2001 French art historian and philosopher, Georges Didi-Huberman, presented an exhibition entitled Four Pieces of Film Snatched from Hell. The exhibition was made up of four photographs developed from film smuggled out of Auschwitz by members of the Jewish Sonderkommando. The Sonderkommando captured haphazard images of Auschwitz at its peak, at risk to themselves, for the purpose of informing those on the outside of what was actually happening in the camps. The imagery contained in the photos is a graphic and horrifying depiction of the plight of those sentenced to death at Auschwitz.
I was tossing up whether to include the images here, but, ethically speaking, I am reluctant to continue to reproduce them solely for academic debate. I don’t think a blog, for example, or an art gallery, for that matter, is an appropriate place to casually reproduce images of tortured and dying people. If you’re keen on seeing the images, they’re easily accessible on the web.
I have a problem with Huberman’s exhibition. Whilst I do believe it is appropriate and necessary for these images to be shown, an art gallery with a casual walk-in audience, and an opening complete with champagne, hors d’oeuvres and cheek kissing, is hardly an appropriate avenue in which to do so. Particularly because Huberman didn’t inform his audience of the background to the images, and, furthermore, because the motivations behind Huberman’s show were largely to challenge his audience’s understanding of ‘what is art’. They were meant to cause outrage and offence, meant to spur discussion about the ethics of representation, probably even meant to raise Huberman’s profile as an artist and philosopher. And hey, I’m writing about it. You’re reading about it. So it worked.
But this isn’t what really got my goat, if you will.
You see, the reason I know about this exhibition in the first place, and the issues surrounding it, is that the exhibition was presented as a discussion topic in a photography art history class I am currently taking. It certainly prompted quite the discussion.
I would have thought that my adverse reaction to the images would be par for the course. I was wrong. Many of my peers seemed to take no issue with using these images in a purely academic mind-expanding way. Anything is subject to art, they said, and these images are no exception. One class member who vocalised this opinion more assertively was questioned by the lecturer as to whether he would then, by extension, be okay with images of his family members in a fatal car accident being turned into art and exhibited in a gallery. To my horror, he maintained that whilst it would be “upsetting” for him, he would accept that art could do anything it liked, that nothing was exempt from art’s purview.
WHAT?
Most people seemed to accept that the use of these images in this context would be offensive to the Jewish nation, and that descendants of those in the camp would, in particular, be within their rights to be “upset”. Um, actually no. I, by virtue of being a human being, am offended by the misuse of these images. Since when did we become so desensitised? Or, should I say, insensitive.
There was a bit of a discussion about Huberman’s exhibition being no different from the glorification/commodification of the Holocaust by novels/films like Schindler’s List, and the ‘tourist attraction’ that is the Jewish Museum and various death camp museums. With regard to the first comparison, I completely disagree. There is a difference between a literary exploration of the human element of the Holocaust and the exploitation of real photographs of real people to make an academic point. With regard to the second point, I’ve been to Auschwitz Birkenau and let me tell you, it is no tourist attraction. In fact, it is a national heritage area, and it is run by volunteers.
It is naive and, in Huberman’s case, insensitive to carry on as if art exists in a vacuum, untainted by moral and ethical concerns and social and political realities. Theoretically speaking, you CAN make art out of anything. But when it comes to whether you SHOULD, some things should be left alone.
Please leave a comment to let me know what you think.
