I watched my grandsons play a new video game the other day. The images were nothing short of amazing, and the battles were lifelike except for one thing. When my grandsons shot the enemy, the victim fell to the ground, moaned, but didn’t show any signs of gore! Then the dead body dissolved. Dissolved? Really?
Their game got me to thinking how photography has made such a dramatic impact in how we view the world. We’ve seen photographs of the thousands of dead bodies during the Civil War. It was our first visual documentation of the brutalities of battle. Then came the photos of the lynching of black Americans. White men, women, and even children used the events as an opportunity to take photos of the mutilated bodies. The 80-year-old photographs of the Holocaust are still a stunning reminder of how cruel we can be.
These photos seared the haunting images into our collective memory.
Photographs still have a strong influence today. Photography influenced public opinion about our involvement in Vietnam. Recently the media stunned us with videos of Syrian people murdered by chemical weapons. The videos of the dead, especially the children, with foam coming from their mouths cannot be unseen.
It was a 1955 photograph that helped spark the civil rights movement: the grisly photo of a 14-year-old boy from Chicago named Emmett Till. His mother, Mamie Carthan-Till, insisted that her son’s funeral be open-casket. She wanted the world to bear witness to the results of the Jim Crow American racism of the mid 20th century. The American public saw first-hand the gruesome reality of racism in America. There is no doubt that Emmett Till’s photo, among others, made a major impact of how we view our culture and our country.
Today, 60-plus years since the murder of Emmett Till, we have sanitized our lives. There are no photos or videos showing the dead bodies from inside the Pulse nightclub, Virginia Tech, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas or Columbine. How can that be? Why is it that we have sanitized these crime scenes from public view? Could it be out of respect for the victims’ next of kin? If that were true, maybe some of the tragic events would have never happened.
Photographs have documented our history for over 150 years. Perhaps the American public would be outraged had they witnessed the bloody remnants of what were once human beings. Instead, we use these terrorist acts as a media event to take another family photo and reflect yet again on why these mass murders happen. These mass murders are flooded with the blood and gore of our fellow citizens, the carnage a result of pure terrorism, and they are happening across our country.
We have to bear witness to the bloodbath we have created.
