Batchen, Gidley, Miller, and Prosser, eds. – Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis

Nancy K. Miller,distinguished professor of comparative literature, English, and French at the Graduate Center.
Geoffrey Batchen, adjunct professor of art history at the Graduate Center
Jay Prosser, English PhD, the Graduate Center

Essays from some of the foremost writers and critics on photography today, including Rebecca Solnit, Alfredo Jaar, Ariella Azoulay, Shahidul Alam, John Lucaites, Robert Hariman, and Susan Meiselas, address the question of the viewer’s role in photos of violence and suffering. Are we desensitized by the proliferation of these images, and does this make it easier to be passive and uninvolved? Or do the images immediately stir our own sense of justice and act as a call to arms? Each essay focuses specifically on an iconic image, offering a distinct approach and context, in order to enable us to look again—and this time more closely—at the picture.

Buy it on Amazon