Tule Lake, Minadoka, Heart Mountain, Grenada, Topaz, Rohwer, Jerome, Gila River, Poston, Manzanar: their names should be etched on our national consciousness as a reminder of how quickly fear can blind us to the “better angels of our nature” and activate the dark side of our democratic sensibilities.  But of course they are not, in all but a few cases the names barely recognizable.   This week marks the 70th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, President Franklin Roosevelt’s ignominious decision to “relocate” some 110,000 Japanese-Americans—over two thirds of whom were U.S. citizens—in the ten internment camps listed above and scattered throughout the western portion of the nation.   Roosevelt signed the order on February 19, 1942, and that the national media has chosen not to acknowledge the occasion of its anniversary only compounds the original tragedy by contributing to the erasure of its memory.

The photograph above was taken twelve years ago at Manzanar, a relocation camp located five miles south of Independence, California—the irony of its name should not escape us—and home to over 10,000 interned Japanese-American residents. The rusted and bent barbed wire that frames the landscape, emphasizing the wide open spaces and the big sky, is at home in the American west where it was a tool used to establish the boundaries of land ownership in an expansive frontier, and to contain and control cattle or other livestock.  Ordinarily such a framing of the landscape would not warrant a second look as perhaps anything more than a photographer’s affected representation of the relationship between nature and civilization.  But here, of course, the barbed wire is not a tool of civilization but a weapon of war, its purpose to imprison a race of people whose only crime was that they didn’t quite look like “us” and whose ethnicity identified them with a country that was at war with the United States.

When located in relationship to its proximate political history the focus invites us to shift our attention from the background to the foreground, from the majesty of the sky and the distant mountains to the violent protrusions of the barbs, from now to then. While all else seems to have been erased—the stables that were initially used to house humans, the eight guard towers that surrounded the compound and provided twenty-four hour surveillance, and indeed the compound itself—the barbs, cast almost but not quite in silhouette, linger as a twisted reminder of our own violent and unjust past, of what once was and risks being again if only because it risks being no more in our collective, public memory.

Photo Credit: Getty Images North America

Manzanar is now a national historical site maintained by the National Park Service.

Which side is the mirror image?  Does it matter?  Isn’t any fashion model already a reproduction of a type that is used to motivate imitation?  As with the replicants in Blade Runner, we might come to learn that they, too, have feelings, personalities, and lives, but that is hardly the point.  More likely, the process provides just enough human features to ensure conformity while subverting any attempt to further humanize the model or those around her.  So it is that we see this model reading, as if she has an interior life of her own, but that interest is then quashed by the duplication that emphasizes her impersonal appearance and replicative function.  All models might read, but so what?

One could place the image in a long lineage of paintings of the woman reader,  If that could restore enough of an aura of authenticity, the viewer might become interested in a considering a woman’s private experience as it can be found in the act of reading.  But that possibility raises the prior question of what one should be looking for in the first place when viewing a double image.   One answer might be some assurance of what is real, or some cue regarding how we might know.  The double image creates an initial skepticism–which side is reality and which is appearance?–and that in turn prompts more careful scrutiny to identity the reflective surface.  Carried far enough, that examination extends to the photograph itself.

Let me suggest that there is much more to be learned than whatever might be gleaned from that philosophical exercise.  And one key to unlocking the power of the double is to turn from the exact duplicate to images could be seen as double images, but need not be.

You want uncanny, you got it.  Or, if you want to shake off the really disturbing vibe, just pretend that they are two very, very different people and focus on either one or the other.  “What a freak” or “What a nice guy” will each work the same–and it doesn’t matter which way you apply them.  The power of this photograph, however, comes from the fact that it, too, is a double image, and one that taps a far deeper fear than the first photograph.  In the first image, whatever lay under the surface could be assumed to be as docile as the well-groomed body on the soft bench.  After all, whatever the content, she’s only reading.

But what if the nice boy in the sweater and the Mad Max outlaw are the same guy?  Because they are, of course: each carefully styled in a different idiom, bodies neatly complementary from top to bottom (look at their legs and hands, for example), with similar clothing (the same V-neck color scheme), and, of course, very comfortable together.  It’s as if the each could fit comfortably in the other’s skin, each the other’s alter ego, good boy and bad boy, the date you can take home to mother and the figure in every slasher movie looming in the dark outside the window.  And, of course, they can be one and the same person.

A subculture dedicated to the production of appearances proves to have more depth than we might think–at least when it becomes a subject for photographic artistry.  A world of social display and mechanical reproduction can also be one in which surfaces can be deceiving.  In place of surface and depth, however, we might want to think about how we always are choosing between simplicity and complexity, and between familiarity and fear.

Photographs by Carlo Allegri/Reuters and Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images.  This is one of several posts I’ve made over the years on double images, although don’t ask me if they form a coherent argument.  For the record, you can see those that a quick search pulled up here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

(Note: Click on the pic to find out who really spoke the quoted words.)

Credit: Tea Party Jesus

Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look by those who are thinking about the character of public life today.

I had raised the issue of how one might come to terms with seeing the image through the cultural lens of Christian iconography: by seeing the outline of the pieta, one’s response could be both emotionally true and otherwise distorted.  After the award was announced, Michael Shaw at BAGnewsNotes prompted renewed discussion, summarizing my post along with commentary by another BAG contributor, Madeleine Corcoran.  The comments that followed expanded the discussion further, including an entry by one of the contest judges, Nina Berman.  At the same time (a day earlier, actually), Jim Johnson voiced his “disappointment” with the selection, arguing that it was derivative not only with regard to the pieta but also within the history of photography, and that it depoliticized the Arab Spring, reinforced traditional gender roles, and interfered with understanding the complex politics of modern Islam.  Jim provoked a dozen comments, and once again Nina weighed in.  On the same day, the New York Times Lens Blog started out with a celebration of the selection (and quoted Nina), but the discussion there soon turned up some of the same issues.  And over at Conscientious, Joerg Colberg added to the critique, pointing out that reliance on conventional iconography makes it too easy to project our own beliefs–and, with that, our military forces.

Joerg also points out that one solution to the problem is increased visual literacy, which is precisely what each of these blogs is trying to provide.

Photograph by Samuel Aranda/New York Times.

Update: The debate is curated much more thoroughly at bitly.

 Brussels

Edinburgh

Montreal

Beijing

Bosnia

Baghdad

Cairo

Herat

Beirut

Karachi

Islamabad

Photo Credits:  Francois Lenoir/Reuters; Andrew Milligan/AP; Shaun Best/Reuters; Adrian Bradshaw/European Pressphoto Agency; Dado Ruvic/Reuters; Sabah Arar/Baghdad; Muhammed Muheisen/AP; Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters; Ali Hashisho/Reuters; Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty; Aamir Qureshi/AFP;

Yes, it is.  And German Chancellor Angela Merkel tweeted that she had “Upgraded Greece from Hellenic to Heroic.”  (Isn’t that clever!)  I can think of a number of reasons that she might want Greece to no longer be Hellenic.  Some of the arguments fall on one side of the debate about how to manage the Greek economy, for the Greeks had made social welfare into an art form and need reform on several levels.  And some of the arguments fall on the other side, for the EU policies are draconian and probably counter-productive while making the EU look more and more like Greater Germany.  So, what is it to be?  I’ve already alluded to the movie Is Paris Burning?, which tells how the German commander of Paris disobeyed Hitler’s order to destroy the city before it could be rescued by the Allied forces.  One also could imagine a variation on a scene from Chinatown: as Jack Nicholson slaps Faye Dunaway repeatedly, she answers with each blow: Hellenic – Heroic – Hellenic – Heroic – Hellenic – Heroic.  As in the movie, the answer isn’t quite what you were supposed to hear.

As the news broke in the US Sunday evening, the headline at the Huffington Post screamed, “Historic Buildings Torched by Rioters as Austerity Vote Passes.”  I immediately imagined the Acropolis in flames (which would take some doing).  Turns out the scale was well below that level of “historic.”  But the symbolism was there implicitly: Athens, the source of Democracy and Western Civilization was burning.  Somehow the West really is declining, collapsing into civil war, convulsed with deep antagonisms, incapable of resolving political and economic problems of its own making much less delivering on its promises and realizing its full potential.

The photos that first popped up on Twitter seemed to both confirm and complicate this story.  The image above lies outside the narrative, as we don’t think of Starbucks as a historic structure (even if it could be located in one), and yet I find it all the more disturbing.  I’m not one to cry for multinational chains, but there is something particularly martial and vicious about torching a familiar storefront.  There are times when protecting the present can be a much more serious business than preserving the past, and I’m not just referring to security operations.  The fact that the cameraman’s hat looks like a storm trooper’s helmet deepens the sense that something like war really is happening, and that a city and perhaps a civilization really is being burned rather than handed over to those who live there.

Analogies should only go so far, of course.  Merkel is not remotely like Hitler, and the demonstrators who are burning local businesses are not freedom fighters.  But one could rightly suspect that a great deal of damage may be done by bankers following orders.  Despite the warnings of those such as Paul Krugman who really do know better, political elites in both Europe and the US are more committed to dangerous neoliberal doctrines than they are making democracy work as it should.

And so we get to another image from last night.

Hellenic or Heroic?  A citadel of democratic aspirations or a city under fire?  The ominous shadows, lurid hues, and a tower of smoke that looks like a tactical nuclear explosion all give the scene an apocalyptic tone.  What truth will be revealed, and what rough beast is slouching towards Athens to be born?  Who really is destroying the city, and are the fires in Athens a symbol of collapse or a sign of the essential struggle between mass and elite come round again?

Photographs by Martin Geissier/Twitter and Nectar de Angel/Twitter.

Credit: Laser Bread; With thanks to Bryan Blankfield for bringing this to our attention.

Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture.  These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.  Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look by those who are thinking about the character of public life today.

Fovea Exhibitions presents a slideshow on continuous loop from February 11-March 4, 2012.

143 Main Street, Beacon, New York

Opening reception: Saturday, February 11 from 5pm to 9 pm.

 Fovea is a volunteer-run 501(c)3 educational charity dedicated to promoting public understanding of world events and social issues through the medium of photojournalism.  You can donate and become a member here.  Their home page is www.FoveaExhibitions.org.

Photograph by Nina Berman/Noor.

Here it is the beginning of February and the temperature in Indiana has been hovering in the mid-40s and low-50s.  Last week one day it was in the mid-60s.  Walking around campus has been a sheer delight, and a far cry from the typical weather one experiences in Indiana in the winter months.  I don’t know what the temperature was when this picture was taken last week in New York’s Central Park, but this is surely not the picture of “love in bloom” we might expect to see at this time of the year with couples skating in Rockefeller Center or maybe making snow angels on the Central Park lawn—or snow plows trying to figure out how to navigate around parked cars on otherwise deserted Manhattan streets.  And so the question is, what’s the problem with global warming, anyway?

Of course, we might not be so sanguine if we lived in Europe where an otherwise mild winter has turned abruptly to historically aberrant and excessively frigid temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in many places.

The scene above is from Kiev where the temperature is 8 degrees Fahrenheit, but the blowing wind no doubt makes it much colder than that.  And here, of course, we see at least part of the problem, for while the weather can be the background for a romantic liaison, it can also accent the effects of social and economic distance.  The woman walking has perhaps been inconvenienced by the frigid temperatures, but not so much that it has kept her from making her way down the street in stylish, high-heeled leather boots.  And judging from her stride it doesn’t seem as if she has noticed the prostrate woman laying in the snow and begging for alms or that she plans on slowing down or stopping.  And when she finally gets home it is altogether likely that her flat or house will be appropriately warm. The woman on the ground, on the other hand, is bundled in mismatched clothing and protected from the snow beneath her by what appears to be a plastic bag.  In all likelihood she is homeless.   And like so many of the poor and homeless, wherever she sleeps this evening her “inconvenience” will be much more acute, resulting in debilitating frostbite or even death. The numbers are hard to calculate, but even the most conservative estimates indicate that over 300 Europeans have died in the past two weeks due to exposure.

None of this proves manmade global warming, of course, but the conditions documented by these photographs surely corroborate the growing consensus to that effect of virtually every scientific organization that has studied weather patterns and climate change, including the National Academy of Science and the Union of Concerned Scientists.  And more, they gesture to at least one of the moral implications of our failure to preserve a sustainable environment, for surely it is the homeless and impoverished who will bear the initial brunt of the floods and draughts that are all but inevitable future effects of our current environmental practices and policies.

As I ponder these photographs it leaves me altogether amazed that serious candidates for the presidency can conclude that climate change is the result of “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects” or that  global warming is a “hoax.”  Then again, it was barely less than a year ago that the Republican members of the  U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee voted down an amendment to a bill that called for Congress to accept the scientific consensus that “climate change is occurring, it is caused in large part  by human activity and it is a threat to human health” on a 20-31 party-line vote.”

 And so, back to the question: What’s the problem with global warming, anyway?  And the answer has to be that the problem is that we seem determined to decide such matters on party line votes that systematically (and quite proudly) ignore the scientific facts.  And more, we forget that the spring-like conditions of a romantic liaison in the park during the dead of winter will have its costs, if not now, soon, and they will point to even deeper problems and contradictions within our collective lives.

 Photo Credits:  Lucas Jackson/Reuters; Gleb Garanich/Reuters

The basic structure of many of the Super Bowl ads is parodic: create a comic imitation of some habit of popular culture or everyday life, place your product in the mix, and hope that the audience of over a 100 million people likes the joke.  The production values are sky high and the jokes are lame, but what did you expect?  Which is one reason I like this photo, as it delivers quite a bit at a bargain price.

The allegorical significance of Star Wars is that the United States is reflected in both sides of the cosmic conflict between the Empire and the rebel forces: democratic ideals and imperial policies, civic virtue and a military-technocratic complex, freely given friendship and the libido dominandi. . . . The list goes on and that’s part of the point, as the two sides are not easily disentangled (as father and son each learned).  Starship Troopers traded on the same market, and the allegory was both clumsier and more direct: an otherwise liberal society (say, on matters of class, gender, and race) could still become a fascist state sustained by perpetual war.

And so we get back to the photo above.  On the one side, the fully equipped, imperial battlefield commander blazoned with propaganda symbols of a long extinct democratic revolution; on the other side, the sage in his humble, monkish habit has set technology aside to communicate a deeper, more organic wisdom.  Will he be able to get through the training and other institutional habits encasing the young commander?  But what if he is the one working for the Dark Side?

Silly, perhaps, but then football was never free of myth: think of The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, winning one for the Gipper, and other hoary tales.  Likewise, science fiction has always been about the present, and about the relationship between politics and society.  The Super Bowl is a relative newcomer, but thanks to the power of spectacle it’s catching up fast.  An extravaganza for the masses where tickets cost thousands of dollars, it knows a thing or two about contradictions.  Thus, the photo above captures something of the spirit of the age: an age where all media are mixed media (to quote W.J.T. Mitchell) and mixing genres is now second nature in media production at all levels from major media events to what’s on your smart phone. Even so, it’s still a photo from the sports page.  To really see how far fantasy football can extend, you have to go to Madonna.

Eat your heart out, Cleopatra.  The material girl keeps the political allegory going strong, but now we’re back in a Pharaonic court.  Like what you see, America?  This past could be your future, and remember: the job of litter bearer can’t be outsourced.

Or maybe it’s just for fun.  Or perhaps it’s really a football picture after all.  You make the call.

Photographs by Elsa/Getty Images and Matt Slocum/Associated Press.  I discuss Madonna’s use of the courtly style in Political Style: The Artistry of Power, pp. 83-86.

Cross-posted at BAGnewsNotes.