“Conflict Reporting” on Third Text, Volume 35, Issue 2 (2021)
Conflict Reporting
Aestheticising Objectivity
By Alfredo Cramerotti & Lauren Mele
Pages 248-262 | Published online: 29 Jan 2021 | Published in print: February 2021
Abstract
In 2001, artists Broomberg and Chanarin documented a day in the Iraq war. The result was a visual yet non-descript narrative, achieved with light and presence; a physical documentation of their journey titled The Day Nobody Died. In 1968 photojournalist Eddie Adams captured Saigon Execution in Vietnam, also a war-time image but with the lens of reportage. The former is a rendition of their experience, not bound by the constraints and facets of aestheticising fact. The latter was presented as news and was the receiver of outrage and scrutiny as such. This article explores how representations of humanitarian crises and wartime are complicit in their perpetuation, and how art demonstrates an attempt at representing such events as futile. We seek to establish a link between what is viewed and what is reported; what is seen and what remains outside the picture; an attempt to unravel what the difference is between viewing and witnessing.
Abstract available at https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2021.1873003
‘Conflict Reporting’ on Switch [On Paper] Issue September 2020
Image: Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, The Press Conference, June 9, 2008 (detail) from The DayNobody Died, 2008
Observing the limits of photojournalism in the face of humanitarian and wartime tragedies, artists have sought ways to bear witness to human suffering freed from the grip of media and government powers. Their approach is not without problems. Perhaps their critical potential lies in testing these limits.
An investigation by Alfredo Cramerotti and Lauren Mele for Switch [On Paper], the only international news weekly where art and culture serve as a window on the world.
Full text here: https://www.switchonpaper.com/en/conflict-reporting/
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