A Chinese American woman sitting in the driver's seat of a white car points a revolver toward her mouth. Her lips are stained with blood red lipstick. It's that smear of lipstick on those gently parted lips that disturbs me most. Lips ready to receive the barrel of a gun like a phallus. My gaze then turns to her hands. Index finger cocked on the trigger-- her other hand steadies the trigger hand, tendons straining.
The power of photographs lies in their duality of time. On one hand, a photograph is arresting precisely because it arrests a moment in time. It freezes 1/300 or less of a second, depending on the photographer's shutter speed. In this sense, it slows down our sense of time. In real time things move too fast for us to notice and take in minute details. But on the other hand, photographs also give echo, reverberation of the context in which they were taken and expand beyond the frames of the captured image.
This photograph detached from its context and back story is disturbing because of what it depicts. Here is a woman a nanosecond away from blowing her brains out. The viewer imagines what happens the moment after the camera shutter clicks: the trigger is pulled. Freezing time in this way creates suspense.
But context, in this case, only adds to its disturbing qualities. This photo reenacts writer Iris Chang's final moment before she committed suicide on November 9, 2004 at the age of 36. Originally part of a fashion photo shoot from Vice magazine's literary women issue (Vice has since taken the original article off their website), the rest of the photo spread depicts other famous women authors, such as Virgina Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, moments before their suicides.
It isn't just that the image of suicide (or suicide seconds away from happening) is disturbing, rather it's the manner in which this particular photo is being used. It's a fashion shoot, so the carefully contrived clothing that these literary women wear is also labeled. The caption tells us both Chang's date of death and that "she" wears a Suno Jacket which creates a startling clash. What exactly is the viewer supposed to feel? Pity for these mentally ill women? Envy for their very beautiful and expensive clothes? Outrage at personal pain being used to market clothing? Sorrow for Chang's family (including her 11 year old son) who might see this?
All of these responses are valid [see the comments about the photograph here], and strike me as revealing in my aim to define disturbing imagery. One key component all disturbing images have in common: they arouse strong emotions. As a result, they are seared in our memory long after we stop looking, which is exactly what the fashion editors of Vice wanted, though they took extreme means to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment