BIG READ: Seeking and hiding pictures of the war dead
Photographs make us witnesses to the cruelty and sadism of warriors
The daily images of violence, of maimed and mangled bodies of Palestinians, especially the photographs that have streamed across social media, increasingly since October 2023, have been startling reminders of, and incontrovertible truth, that mass-scale killing and dying are going on in that beleaguered part of western Asia.
Where photographs have been withheld, we are reminded, also, of state manipulation of media access to and, in the current phase of the decades-long war, of withholding evidence for the purposes of the Israeli state through direct intervention to prevent the public from seeing the bodies of soldiers who were sent to die and kill on their behalf. Most notably, perhaps, the images are daily reminders of our voyeuristic and morbid fascination with violence — of our sadism...
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