Ever since I began my dissertation research on McVeigh's execution, I have been fascinated by society's fixation with photographs of the living-but-soon-to-be-dead--by the import of images taken almost immediately before the subjects die or as they are actually dying (when the photographer is aware that the person will soon pass), and by the additional symbolic import that is added to the aesthetics of other photographs after their subject dies. We often encounter this when someone dies suddenly as the victim of homicide (think Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald), or when an offender is about to be executed (news coverage of the condemned often features pictures of the inmates in prison garb, presumably on death row).
The recent photographic coverage of Bhutto's death has triggered these interests; the photographs taken of her shortly before her death are often captioned in a way that reminds the reader that this is a photograph taken in the moments before death (e.g., "Bhutto's last glance..."). It seems that these photographs are especially poignant when their subjects are the victims of crimes, since those deaths occur suddenly and thus are deaths out of time and place, but if someone is photographed shortly before being murdered the images are especially surreal as s/he was presumably around at least one other person, living life as usual, very shortly before being done to death.
The power of a photographic image is found partially in the construction of its subject, a point that was aptly covered by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida. Barthes remarked that there is something dead in every photographic subject, with "death" here not being a literal state but one of fixation and permanence, a momentary capture of a mortal body with the potential to remain preserved and timeless even as the body shrivels and passes into shadow. As I look back over the coverage of photographs taken of Bhutto shortly before her death, I can't help but recall Barthes' words. Bhutto's behavior comports with our socially constructed expectations of how the image will appear. She looks serene and stately, mature and wise. These photos seem infused with an almost erotic quality, which Susan Sontag identified in Regarding the Pain of Others. The eroticism stems from the pleasure of viewing and our appreciation for the appropriateness of the truth and symbolic values that the photograph embodies.
These photographs contain messages for their viewers about the death to which they allude--messages that ultimately cause one to reflect upon the nature of the death and its legality or illegality, and messages that are ultimately added to our societal narratives of how the photographic subjects lived and died. The photographs of Bhutto infuse viewers with regret for her untimely and violent end. Images of someone about to be executed, posed in prison garb, seem to affirm that a state execution is a deserved death in which the prisoner will pass--but peacefully, in contrast to his victim. The emotional aesthetics of these photographs are not likely to be as complex as those of photographs taken of a violent death, such as the immortal photograph of Ruby shooting Oswald or photographs of the botched execution of Tiny Davis in 1999.
Thoughts?
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