Goldsmiths University of London, Art and Politics, Dep. of Politics and International Relations, 2018.

History has been created through stories and the memories of individuals having witnessed certain events. Today, however, the media no longer exist as narratives but rather as flashes and images. History is therefore being reduced to images.

Paul Virilio to David Levi Strauss. (2003, p.167)

This essay investigates the ability of photographs to bear witness to historical trauma and how differing approaches to visualisation, forms of distribution and presentation may affect how an audience is called to perceive a historical trauma. This is examined through the analysis of selected images captured by photographers Jerome Sessini and Donald Weber during the protests in Kiev in February 2014 and immediately after the MH17 Flight was shot down while flying over Eastern Ukraine on the 17th of July in 2014. I assert that despite the aesthetic differences and dissimilar visual strategies, both the images of Sessini and Weber are the result of an active process of documentation that has the potential to bear witness to the events and historical trauma in Ukraine. As Barbie Zelizer noted:

‘The capacity to forge a personal connection with a traumatic past depends first on the materiality of photographs, whereby photographic images stand-in for the larger event they are called to represent’ (2002, p.669).

The qualities of the photographs, as physical objects, enable the viewer to remember and to understand an event more clearly and therefore images create the opportunity to bear witness to historical trauma. Nevertheless, as one inherent peculiarity of every photograph is that they frame only a portion of reality, and moreover that the context of photographs’ publication is crucial to the events’ interpretation, I contend that rather than interpreting individual images, one should conceive photographs as fragments and interpretations of reality. The comparison of these multiple differing fragments, perspectives, and methods of visual representation may constitute the elements which enable a multitude of photographs to allow viewers to bear witness to historical trauma.

The tenacious scepticism toward photography to compromise or foreclose a traumatic event must then be inscribed primarily into the use and diffusion of the photographs rather than the images themselves. Butler noted the following:

Photographs neither torture or redeem, but can be instrumentalised in radically different direction, depending on how it is discursively framed and through what form of media presentation it is displayed (2009, p.92).

To validate my argument, I analyse Sessini’s and Weber’s pictures using a chronological ordering of the events in Ukraine, thereby uncovering both the visual and political narrative of the events between February and July 2014.

The Theatre of Maidan

1 – ‘Architecture of Siege’, the landscape of violence.

We encounter the modern world and its history via depictions of catastrophe, atrocity, suffering and death. During the past 100 years or so, traumatic historical events and experiences have been re-imagined and re-enacted for us to witness over and over by constantly evolving media and art forms.

(Broderick and Traverso, 2011, p.3)

Donald Weber is a Canadian photographer with a background in architecture; he extensively worked in Ukraine, and in the recent years, he nearly abandoned traditional photojournalism to dedicate himself to individual and personal projects in the practice of documentary photography. He arrived in Kiev at the end of January 2014, when the protestors already controlled an extensive part of the city centre around Maidan Square and had created an elaborate complex of barricades, a tent camp, controlled entrances, and a strong frontline against police attacks. Weber produced the first of a series in Kiev titled ‘Architecture of Siege’, from a slightly elevated point of observation.

In ‘Hrushevskogo Street III’ (fig. 1), the photograph depicts a centred line of a brick wall and a pile of tires several meters in front of it. Behind the wall, a sparse group of protestors are differently equipped with improvised helmets and rudimentary weapons; some of them are wearing military camouflage outfits. The picture does not portray a moment of action nor a moment of confrontation between the protestors and the police forces, on the contrary the image present to the viewer the backstage of a near frontline. In other words, the photograph does not resemble the dramatic

images that dominated the pages of the press at the time. Nevertheless, as I elucidate in the future chapters of this paper, the riots occurred merely several blocks outside the frame of the picture. This first observation already confirms the limits of every photograph and the primary challenge of a single image to bear witness to historical trauma. The photographer’s choice of depicting a specific area from a specific perspective is if fact already an element of compromise as it reluts in a partial interpretation of the reality. Furthermore, a closer observation reveals anomalies which Weber also described:

The image is a composite of nine image files. Look closely and you’ll see one man with severed head, one man with half a skull and one man dismembered at the waist – not literally, they just appear so due to the stitch I made in post-production. I left these anomalies to prove that images are not real (Weber, 2015).

The resulting image is a composition of multiple frames of the same scene and immediately addresses the issue of what ‘reality’ an image may truly describe. The technical artifice of stitching1 results in a substantially larger image and therefore in significantly more clear and precise details of the infrastructures of protest. The photograph became counter to the photo- journalism of the event, as it speaks to the detail of the image rather than depicting the action of the events pursued by the media industry. Opting for a dispassionate representation in which the perspective is nearly absent and in which the softness of the light produces a sense of detachment, the photograph allows the observer to focus on the details of the scene, on the topology of the protest and on the delineated space of representation. This is in fact also the area where a disproportionate amount of media were all gathered hunting for their images. The lack of actions places emphasis on a different ‘reality’ of the protest. The image refers to the assemblage or the topological layers of the spaces and allows one to contemplate the landscape of violence.

On TV and in magazines, etc., Euromaidan garnered the ridiculous moniker of the ‘Revolution of Fire and Ice,’ a descriptor that drove the visual representation of the event across the screen and printed page. Yes, there was a lot of ice, as it as winter, and nothing is more appealing to media than a clean narrative, so fire and ice is also good vs. evil, left vs right, east vs. west, etc., tidy descriptors without the need to do actual reporting (Weber to Monteleone, 2018).

Media is insatiable for any kind of simplistic icon to drive narrative. Moreover, the abundance of dissemination of alarming images make the reality itself little more than a spectacle, ‘the information of the media become than meaningless’ (Baudrillard, 1995, 1994, p.79). As Sontag observed: ‘shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value’ (2004, p.20). The risk of compromising historical trauma should be attributed not merely to the formal and compositional qualities of the image, but rather to their diffusion in the media. Perceptions of reality and perceptions of media construction do not invariably align. Weber’s observation from Maidan appears to empirically confirm this theory:

The scene itself was theatre. Here we had the stage of revolution. A police line, protests as the Greek chorus, the set itself was the barricade. There was literally an audience. Grandmothers, parents, kids, teens, workers, passers-by, anybody could come and spectate, and they did. [...] The protestors themselves were dressed for a show. [...] Many of the protestors themselves referenced modern media, as they had seen images of protests around the world and from different generations. [...]. I’m caught in a weird loop where we photograph the protestors, the protestors see what gets photographed, they dress the part and then we photograph them again (Weber, 2015).

If photography is therefore confined between a partial representation of reality and the theatricality of reality itself, what are the alternatives in relation to photography that bears witness to historical trauma? I argue that deconstructing the dominant narrative and seek methodologies to act against the dominant image landscape is one of the strategies to create opportunities to bear witness to historical trauma.

2 – ‘Molotov Cocktails’, the protestors’ weapon.

To remain true to the decontextualized traumatic image, not only must critics refrain from any historical explication, which would normalize the image, but photographic art must also resist the banalities of all conventional representation of trauma.

(Luckhurst, 2008, p.163)

‘Molotov Cocktails’ (fig.2) are a series of still life works depicting the bottles used by protestors as weapons against the police and the government’s armed forces.

The bottles are photographed frontally, the little dirt on the white paper used as background reveal that the pictures were most likely captured in the proximity of the barricade. The images’ sharpness allows one to recognise the details and identify the brand and the original contents of the bottle (in most cases Ukrainian bear and vodka) as well as the craftsmanship of the Molotov production. This enables one to observe the details in the image: the sticks, the rags, the wire, the brand, the different sizes; The specific typology in the bottles denotes different means of launching. Every detail induces an imaginative process that connects Weber’s unanimated bottle with the field of the riots.

I decided on the very simple representation of the Molotov as I was intrigued by this notion of fire (as it really was a weapon used by the protestors) and how they use primal elements to fend off the much more organized and violent state authorities. It was a purely sustainable enterprise, empty bottles you can find everywhere, reused for drinking or for violence, stuffed with rags and bits of cloth and all ignited with a little fuel (Weber, 2018).

Interestingly, Weber’s choice to adopt a forensic approach to depict the Molotov Cocktail is reminiscent of the images commonly produced by forensic police as evidence of crimes or murder. The images provide evidence of the ‘only’ weapon used by the protestors2 and create the imaginative space in the viewer to bear witness to the Maidan fight between the police and the protestors. As in the previous series, Weber prefers to remove the violent representation of the event and to adopt a metaphorical vision that, in this case, invites one to reflect on the act of throwing these bottles, which is commonly portrayed in the media. The photographs then become counter-images but nevertheless encapsulate the nature of the protest and serve as a confrontation of photojournalism to challenge the norms and tropes of storytelling.

The invisibility of violence and the rejection of tropes are key elements in Weber’s images. As Mitchell noted, ‘the invisible and the unseen has, paradoxically, a greater power to activate the power of imagination than a visible image’ (2011, p.84). Lowe confirmed this theory:

In the case of images of atrocity, perhaps those that do not show the act of violence itself, but rather allude to it [...], might engage our imagination more successfully than those whose more graphic content simply repulses us (2012, p.198).

Weber’s strategies for depicting the Maidan revolt differ from the dominant narrative of the event; they become an alternative to seduce and engage and to ‘complexify the perceptual experience of the spectator’ (Möller, 2016, p.21).

If we accept Zelizer’s definition of bearing witness as ‘an act of witnessing that enable people to take responsibility for what they see’ (2002, p.698), then we can recognise Weber’s images as a means to engage meaningfully with the problem of representing the Maidan protest. Operating at the edges of dominant discourse, these images enable viewers to perceive the events under a different light. Moreover, Butler noted the following:

The question for photography thus concerns not only what it shows, but also how it shows what is shows. The “how” not only organize the image but works to organizes our perception and thinking as well. [...] the photograph can only be conducted within certain kinds of frames – unless the mandatory framing becomes part of the story; unless there is a way to photograph the frame itself. At this point, the photograph that yields its frame to interpretation thereby opens to critical scrutiny the restrictions on interpreting reality (2009, pp.71–72).

I contend that Weber’s images are ‘a disobedient act of seeing’ (Butler, 2009, p.72), since they also disclose the restrictions of the media industry’s accounts of what occurred. In this respect, they both bear witness to the historical trauma and are critical of the dominant visual representation of the same trauma.

We Need Traumatic Images

1 - February 18 – 20, The Bloodiest days.

Images of trauma can be part of a complex array of social processes through which existing forms of political power and order are restrained. Or, on the contrary, trauma imaginary can disrupt established political patterns and sow seeds of genuine political transformation.

(Hutchison, 2018, p.306)

Not far from where Weber’s pictures were captured, French-Italian photographer Jérôme Sessini was advancing with a group of protestors toward Istitutskaya Street when he found himself under the fire of snipers.

In the photograph (fig.3), three dead bodies lie on the ground, two on their back, and one on his torso, which suggests that he was shot from behind. A man who is standing communicates with the younger petrified man in front of him. Several meters behind them, a group of men protect themselves behind a tree and rudimentary shields. In the background, a larger group is in a defensive position at the base of a column of smoke which is rising from the centre of the image. The blood on the ground near the deceased man’s head on the left indicates a precise shot by a sniper, as is confirmed by the caption and by further criminal investigation.

The photograph clearly depicts a crime scene, an ambush, and the moment immediately after the act of killing. Sessini, who is an experienced conflict photographer and vice president of Magnum Agency,3 ‘is very careful with the rightness of his photographic work’ (Magnum Photos, n.d.); and recorded the scene with extreme lucidity and coldness. ‘The frontally posed image succeeded in defeating theatricality, by acknowledging of conditions of spectatorship’ (Roth, 2012, p.204). Moreover, despite the extraordinary formal composition, the image does not trivialise the scene, and the photograph appears to adhere to Sontag’s statement when she wrote: ‘Photographs that depict suffering shouldn’t be beautiful, as captions shouldn’t moralize’ (2004, p.68). Still, the violence of the image haunts the viewer: The protestors who are still alive are physically and morally overwhelmed. Death, suffering, fear, and violence perpetrated on alleged innocents appear in Sessini’s images and serves as traumatic evidence of Maidan’s carnage, quickly becoming the symbol of Yanukovych’s government brutality and violence. Although the image (and video)4 had a wide diffusion in the media, Sessini remains suspicious about the dominant narrative of Maidan riots and the ability of his image to carefully depict the episode that took place:

I went to Kiev as a simple photojournalist. As a regular contributor in the media industry I know there is always a pre-narrative established in a conflict. The difference is that the western medias call it propaganda or information depending where it come from. I don’t know if I’m able to break it, I’m not even sure that photography is the right medium to tell the truth. I think my images of Institutska had a strong impact on the audience, but they do not answer to the main question: Who were the snipers and why they shot among protesters and police too? (Sessini to Monteleone, 2018)

Sessini, a regular contributor to prestigious newspapers and magazines, is conscious that the emotional impact of the image may evoke an emotional response in the audience, but he is also aware that the same image is not an enough piece of evidence. As Butler noticed: ‘in framing reality, the photograph has already determined what will count within the frame’ (Butler, 2009, p.67). The image therefore may expose misleading evidence and thereby compromise the opportunity to bear witness to the traumatic event.

Sessini’s individual photograph perhaps does not disclose all the facets of what transpired on Istitutskaya Street on the morning of February 20th. Nevertheless, a larger series of his pictures and the video, in combination with numerous other images of the event shaped the public opinion of the Maidan protests to the extent that a rapid change in the course of Ukraine’s political events occurred:

Two days after the shootings, Yanukovych fled to Russia. Over the next few weeks, Ukraine’s Parliament held new elections. Pro-Western parties won at the polls and would later enter into a trade agreement with the European Union. President Vladimir Putin of Russia claimed that what had just taken place amounted to a coup. He seized Crimea and made inroads into Ukraine’s eastern provinces (Schwartz, 2018).

Moreover, years later, a vast collection of photographic and video material captured in the area of Istitutskaya Street was used for a sophisticated forensic investigation that is being accepted by the Kiev criminal court to identify who is responsible for some of the killing.5

Sessini's photograph, like any photograph examined in its individuality, can only reveal a fragment of reality, and, as such, its representative capacity travels on the precarious boundary between creating opportunities to bear witness to historical trauma and compromising them. However, Roth has noted the following:

Images are not the cure for a lacunae of a traumatic history, but they did change our relationship to those fragments of the past that are left to us. We must not treat images, and other testimony, as communicating the unveiling of the one essential meaning, but neither should we reject them as always already deceptive (2012, p.195).

The collection of these fragments of reality then become the elements to triangulate multiple sources of information, to understand the shocking event, and to bear witness to historical trauma.

2 - MH17, The Global Trauma.

Crisis coverage demands pictures. Arresting images may not prevent compassion fatigue - they may in fact promote it by causing viewers to turn away from trauma - but no pictures for a crisis is even worse. If a story doesn’t have a visual hook, an audience will often ignore it.

(Moeller, 1999, p.37)

In July 2014, Sessini was still covering the conflict in Ukraine. This time, the war began in the eastern part of the country and involved the Ukrainian government and various Ukrainian nationalist militia as well as other groups of Pro-Russian separatist forces backed by Russian Government. On July 17th the Malaysian airline flight MH17 was shot down in the sky above Eastern Ukraine, causing the death of 298 passengers who were mostly European; wreckages from the plane and bodies of the passengers were found across an area of twenty square kilometres, transforming the village of Torez into a horrific scene and making the Ukrainian crisis global. Sessini was among the first to arrive on the scene and produce a series of terrifying images which were largely published in newspapers and magazines and earned him the first prize for spot news in the World Press Photo contest in 2015. For the purpose of this paper, I analyse only one (fig. 4) of Sessini’s photos with the intention of elaborating upon an argument about the relationship between trauma and photography, their specific use in the media, and the ethical aspect of the photographer bearing witness.

The image is perfectly in focus, and there are no graphic elements to disturb the composition. The

wheat field occupies three quarters of the photograph, the landscape is enshrouded by warm light.

The sky is covered by pale blue clouds and is reminiscent of a Canaletto painting. In the centre,

the inert body of one of the passengers is still tied to the airplane’s chair.

The posture is evocative of a Renaissance canvas and the passenger’s face is hidden by ears of grain. The image is excruciating in its contrast between the tranquillity of the landscape and the monstrousness of death, the placidity of the countryside and the disturbance of the corpse. Sessini, recalled his arrival on the scene in an interview with Time Magazine:

[What I saw] was horrific, almost unreal [...] I was in shock. I don't think I ever felt so sick. [...] I found one body that went through the roof of a house and landed in someone's bedroom. It's a real nightmare [...]. I don't think I'll be able to board a plane without thinking about these images (Sessini to Gibson, 2014).

As the citation above denotes, despite being physically presence on the scene, Sessini describes the scene as ‘unreal’, as if the reality before him was so traumatising that it cannot be represented or descried except through visions of images. Interestingly, Sessini’s citation empirically support the psychiatric theory that ‘tends to define trauma as an event that overwhelms one's perceptual- cognitive faculties, creating a situation in which the individual does not really experience the event as it happens’ (Roth, 2012, p.91).

In this respect, the images constitute the memory of such shocking and traumatic events, and the memory is elaborated through images even before the images are eventually produced. Baer, among others, acknowledged the similarity with photography when he wrote that trauma ‘parallels the defining structure of photography, which also traps an event during his occurrence while blocking its transformation into memory’ (2002, p.9).

Moreover, Sessini’s last sentence also implies a universal value of such a view and, by transitive propriety, to the image of such scene. The image goes beyond the specific representation of the event but becomes symbolic of a collective trauma and fear. Therefore, the photograph not only bears witness to the shocking MH17 shot down and the dramatic consequences of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, but also becomes the symbolic and monstrous representation of violent accidental death with which every observer can vividly empathise and experience vicarious horror. The body in the field could be anyone’s body. Broderick and Traverso noted the following:

images [...] possess the capacity to generate abstract meaning, and, in fact more often than not the visual and narrative rendition of the pain of individual characters is interpreted as a synecdoche for the suffering of people, culture and nation. (2011, p.4)

Photography’s duality of being both a document of an event and the metaphorical representation of dramatic episode contributes to the paradoxicality of photographs. This particularly applies to traumatic images. While one expects photographs to be evidence of particular events, one also

responds emotionally to their symbolic contents: ‘Emotions are thus a critical element of how viewers perceive trauma through images’ (Hutchison, 2018, p.307) and eventually how individuals or collectives may process historical trauma. Therefore, the problem of such traumatic images, imprisoned between their testimonial and emotional qualities, to bear witness to historical trauma or compromising it, becomes more complex with their diffusion and distribution: ‘How trauma images function depends on the context in which they are seen’ (Hutchison, 2018, p.313). Sessini’s photograph was widely published in numerous international magazines and newspapers. Nevertheless, the editorial choice was problematic, even editors and journalists expressed concern and disgust about the diffusion of such images not only in news outlets but also on social media. For example, the Guardian’s columnist Susanne Moore expressed disquiet and disgust:

‘They were given no dignity. Where is our basic decency? We are told that to understand war we need to see the slaughter of civilians. The awful reality is that all wars look much the same. We need not just to see but to imagine’ (Moore, 2014).

Critics of the diffusion of such images emerge clearly also among insiders and practitioners. Interestingly, in this specific case, such critics emerged mostly from European media. Despite the symbolic value of the photograph, the potential direct identification with the victims may have precipitated a harsher response and prompted ethical questions about the identity of the exposed victim. Sessini, who also captured an image in which merely a trace of the body is visible in the field, also acknowledged this possibility:

‘For what I’ve heard, the one where the corps of the passenger is seen had a stronger impact. [...] Another important element is the fact that the victim is a white European person. The audience is used and saturated with images of victims in Africa, the Middle East etc...’(Sessini to Monteleone, 2018)

Sontag elaborated the theory that ‘the farer is the place of the tragedy, the more the audience is exposed to direct and uncensored dead and cruelty’ (2004, p.63), raising an additional ethical question about depicting victims of traumatic events:

‘Showing abhorrence close to home is too direct an approach. The viewers’ normal passivity would be breached, asking immediate engagement with the victim. They would experience it more as an attack on their own safe way of living which would evoke a contrary effect to what the reporters want to archive’ (Van Craeyvelt, 2007, p.60)

Again, the problem arises in the moment the photograph is distributed: As soon the image is published, while Sessini’s photograph has the potential to bears witness to the dramatic shootdown of a civilian plane in a territory of war, it simultaneously compromises the memory of the event with the brutality of its representation. Sontag observation again seems to give no escape to justify such traumatic images: ‘The remembering through photographs eclipses other forms of understanding and remembering’ (2004, p.29).

Conclusion

‘Witnessing may not change the world, but having that conversation marks it, tempers it, and sometimes rubs in red raw. The act of witnessing is not a neutral act. It does not spare feelings. The witness spares nothing and nobody, not even the witness. That is the idea - to prick the conscience, to lodge the memory, or stick in the throat. In this sense the witness is more akin to an agitator than a bystander, but also more purposive, more principled, more pure.’

(Danchev, 2018, p.333)

This essay has argued that photographs possess inherent potential to enable viewers to bear witness to historical trauma despite the specific technical features that constrain them to reproduce merely a partial reality. The common criticism toward photography derive from the excessive expectations of their testimonial abilities and from the misunderstanding arising from the confusion between photography and their use in a specific context: ‘Like all the representations, images are subjective. The meaning they attain are contingent’ (Hutchison, 2018, p.313). Weber and Sessini used different aesthetics and functional choices and have experienced differing exposure (Weber’s images have not been used in the news, while Sessini’s photographs have had great visibility) and have illuminated a dissimilar and complementary narrative of events in Ukraine. In the case of Sessini, they partly reinforced the dominant narrative, both in terms of aesthetics and their contents; conversely, in Weber's case, they acted as a noncompliant answer. Both photographers nevertheless appear to be more troubled about the use of their images rather than the images themselves. This is a common dilemma among practitioners. Morel’s seems to recognize the photographers’ good intentions when he noted:

Courageous photographers creatively shared photographs as prophetic acts of resistance against official propaganda. This goes far beyond the restrictive framework of distant consumption and voyeurism. These images are temporal, they achieve a figural status when their dialectical, deconstructive nature is affirmed, in a burning instant.(Morel, 2018)

Nonetheless, if the photographs respond to a specific request motivated by a specific temporal context, the opposite is also true: ‘Political awareness among readers/viewers, and some degree of knowledge acquired prior to the viewing experience’ (Möller, 2016, p.11) is required to understand photographs. In this respect, Weber’s images’ complexity requires the more straightforward exposure of the audience to Sessini’s images to be processed and understood, to be related to the events in Ukraine. In other words, the ability to bear witness to historical trauma cannot be attributed to the capabilities of single images (the iconic images that precipitated the prosperity and misinterpretation of documentary photography in the past), but rather to the complexity of several perspectives, forms of diffusion, and occasions for debate that photographs may produce.

‘We can use the photographs' ambiguities as a starting point of discovery: by connecting these photographs to the world outside their frames’ (Linfield, 2010, p.29). This is even more necessary in the political complexity of a modern civil war such as the one in Ukraine. As the Russian- American writer Keith Gessen noticed in his astute observation about western media reports in Ukraine:

‘The story being told was that a democratic revolution had struck down an evil, pro-Russian regime by braving the elements and bullets on Maidan; in response, Russia had seized Crimea and then fomented a fake rebellion in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians were victims of Russian aggression. This was pretty much the story that I reproduced during my initial reporting trip to Ukraine in March 2014. This story was not untrue. The trouble was that it left out a lot of other not-untrue stories’ (2015).

Photography, particularly when serving media purposes, is significantly similar to writing. However, during the years since its invention, photography has changed; photographers working in the field of photojournalism and documentary photography have employed aesthetic and divulgation strategies which are more elaborate than those adopted in the past. For example, Weber's images are not intended for diffusion in the media but rather to be exhibited in museums and galleries and in this way to become a form of critic to the restrictiveness of media industry. Even in the case of Sessini, his broader work in Ukraine, which is intended to be collected in a photobook, may produce a different narrative from the one presented in the pages of the newspapers. This may precipitate a wider debate not only about the specific contents of images and the events they illustrate, but also about photography itself, how we interpret photographs, and what we can understand from them. As exposed within the examples of this essay, photographs may both create opportunity to bear witness to historical trauma and compromise them: ‘A picture of something terrible will always be caught between two worlds: the world of ‘something terrible’ [...] and the world of ‘a picture’ [...]. The dazzle of art and the bitterness of life are yoked to each other. There is no escape’ (Cole, 2018).

Rather than encouraging the old debate about the deficiencies or achievements of photography, which was mostly anchored to a time when the events of the world were illustrated in pages of magazines, I prefer to acknowledge that photographs are ‘instruments of power’ and that it ‘is always possible to produce counter power or counter images’ (Mondzain, 2009, p.9). ‘It is [...] the responsibility of those who make images to build a place for those who see, and it is the responsibility of those who present images to understand their modes of construction’ (Mondzain, 2009, p.34). Theorist of photography and visual culture Ariella Azoulay defined photography as an ‘event’(2012, p.26), an encounter not only between the photographer and the subject depicted, but as a contract which necessary must involve the active participation of the viewer. Encouraging the audience ‘to stop looking at pictures and start watching them’(Azoulay, 2008, p.14) means in other words that is not only the photograph’s responsibility to bear witness to historical trauma, but also an obligation of the audience to discern what they are looking at when they are looking at photographs.

Notes:

1 The technique of stitching consists in combining multiple photographic images with overlapping field to produce panoramic or hi-res images. The practice is not admitted in the photojournalism industry which allow only single un-cropped frame and consider stitching as a form of manipulation of ‘reality’. The practice of stitching is condemned by organization such as the World Press Photo Foundation. (World Press Photo, n.d.)

2 Despite the large majority of the protestors in Euromaidan used Molotov and rudimental weapon further investigations and eyewitness reported that members of the Far-Right group ‘Pravy Sektor’ (Right Sector) possessed and used guns and rifles. (Gatehouse, 2015)

3 Magnum Photo is collective of photographers and probably among the most famous and prestigious photo agency in the word, renowned for the idea of authorship in photography. ‘ Magnum has documented most of the world’s major events and personalities since the 1930s; covering industry, society and people, places of interest, politics and news events, disasters and conflict. In short, when you picture an iconic image, but can’t think who took it or where it can be found, it probably came from Magnum.’ (Magnum Photos, n.d.)

4 Sessini produced also a 5 min. footage during the shooting and before realizing the image used as example in this essay. For the purpose of this paper I decided not to discuss the video in detail, but it remains an extraordinary example not only as a document of the event but also as a testimony of the photographer’s risks and behavior in such dangerous circumstances. The video can be seen at the following link: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1cwnox. Interestingly the link to the video is restricted in Russia. (Sessini, 2014b)

5 Maidan Event Reconstruction: SITU Research and The Carnegie Mellon Center for Human Rights Science (CMU CHRS) worked together to conduct event reconstruction related to the deaths of three protesters in Kiev on February 20th, 2014 during the Euromaidan protests.(SITU, The Carnegie Mellon Center for Human Rights Science, n.d.)

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