Questions Without Answers

Questions Without Answers is a photography exhibit at Tufts of work by the VII agency, encompassing all of the major conflicts and disasters of the last 2 decades. It engendered quite a bit of controversy in one of my classes, with several of the students feeling like the material was presented in an overwhelming and desensitizing way that could cause the viewer to turn away from the material, helpless. Others felt it was an important reality.

Of course I had to go see for myself. These conflicts and their images have been an overarching presence in my life. And the question - how do I live in a world where these things are happening, and to a great extent, as a citizen of the United States, I myself am helping to perpetuate? - that question is the large unanswered question of my life.

Walking into the exhibit, I was stunned. Overwhelmed. As I went from one photograph to the next, my eyes were sometimes blinded by my tears. Two decades of man's inhumanity to man. Two decades of eyes, almost all now dead, looking at me full force. I was going to say accusingly, but that is not it at all.The eyes were just looking. Or not looking. But each spoke with voice that outlives them. A voice that says, I am here. This is real. Look at me. This happened. You cannot close your eyes. You cannot deny. We are part of the same world. We are part of the same humanity.

And the act of standing in that quiet gallery was an act of acknowledgment. Simple and undeniable. And I am grateful for that moment, painful as it was. For in that moment of acknowledgment I felt reconnected with my own humanity, how strange...

Because of the controversy in class, and how moved I was by the show, I had to dig deeper. I found a book "Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Trafficing in Pain" in the school library. And I realized I was in the midst of a controversy that was perhaps as old as photography itself. And not ony that - my two most  profound experiences of the exhibit were at the polar opposites of the debate.

And yes, in those photographs I see beauty. Both beauty of craft and of subject. Franco Pagetti's image of an Iraqi mother and child was a Pieta, straight from Michelangelo. Some criticize the linking of beauty and suffering. But that is a long tradition of Western Art, Christian Art. I have always been moved by religious art. Universal chords are struck. As a mother I feel that mother. For a moment I am her. She is me. An exchange. I will never be the same. And yes, I see her try to hide her face with her hand. And it hurts me that this picture was even taken. I know that gesture. I saw it in Afghanistan, and only once took the picture, my reflex to slow to stop my finger. And that brings up the questions of exploitation, 'traffic' in suffering, payment for services. All valid and important questions to wrestle with. Questions without answers that cause me, for one, as a photographer to look deeply into what I am doing.

How incredible that this exhibit raises those questions. My computer does not. Even though raw materials used in its manufacture come from the Congo and created the conditions giving rise to this photograph by Marcus Bleasedale. It will haunt my fingers on this computer. Will it make a difference? Questions without answers....
I think I have to quote Max Reinhart's essay in the book Beautiful Suffering: In answer to Sontag's criticism of photography:"Photographs do not explain, they acknowledge" he quotes Cavell, "a philosopher who has, for half a century returned again and again to reflecting upon what is entailed in the act of acknowledging. For Cavell acknowledgment is precisely what it is we must offer when confronted with human suffering. It is the difficult, often painful, and thus often avoided act of responding appropriately to the pain of others. 'The acknowledgment of others,'he wrote, 'calls for recognition of the other's specific relation to oneself'" 

There that was what I was trying to get at. And both Alfredo Jarr and the VII photographers demanded from me that moment of acknowledgment.   "Both are egomaniacs" Said one teacher of Natchwey (VII) and Jarr. Perhaps if I knew them better, my knowledge would color the way I see their work. Perhaps. But I kiss their feet, for both have given me my own humanity in the face of an inhuman world, both have given me something to aspire to. Perhaps one in the process, the intention (Jarr) and the other in the result. But both, to my mind infinitely valid. I live in a glass house.

Alfredo Jarr

A visiting artist - his talk reconnected me with why I want to make art - something that can get lost in all the conceptualization!

Here is a letter I wrote to him afterwards. I haven't stopped thinking about him.

Dear Alfredo Jarr –

I was so moved by your talk at the SMFA and your lecture later that night at the Museum that I feel compelled to write to you.

You spoke of how Rwanda made you distrust images, and I have been thinking about that ever since. I had exactly the opposite experience with Rwanda. At the time, I had been living in the wilds of rural of Mexico, completely cut off from news of any kind, and so was completely unaware of what was happening in Rwanda, until I went into a city one day and saw a picture on the cover of Time. It was of the rivers flowing out of Rwanda, running red every 20 minutes as the Hutus went from village to village slaughtering.

That photograph hit me full force and changed the course of my life. I could not believe that this was happening and nobody was doing anything about it. From that moment on, I could no longer continue what I had been doing, no longer stand on the sidelines This one photograph of Rwanda (and then Gorevitch’s book) eventually set me on a course that took me to Afghanistan after the invasion and finally here to study at the Museum school in my fifties.

Since you spoke I have thought deeply about what you said, and my experience with that one photograph. And I think so much has to do with becoming desensitized. Being bombarded day and night with cable news, endless stories, images, propaganda from all sides that one’s heart closes. We feel inundated and paralyzed by all the suffering and injustice around the world, and here in our own communities and so we close our eyes, thinking to preserve our sanity -  and we loose our humanity in the process.

Because, I think, in fact, that when we are able to truly see, to truly feel something, no matter how horrific, there is a counterintuitive sense of…relief….  I have never been quite able to understand it.

But listening to you, to your infinitely sensitive and care-full approach to your work, I realized what it is. When an image, a word, a work of art, reveals the reality that we actually live with blindly every day, when we can feel it for one moment, we become re-sensitized. And then we do in fact regain our humanity. Without it we are lost.

Your art itself and listening to you talk, your whole approach to making art, gave me one of those moments. You are an inspiration. Thank you.

His beautiful website: alfredojaar.net

An Art21 episode: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/jaar/index.html