You may recall that since April we’ve been making podcasts available from some of the speakers at the Democratic Image Symposium. Also covering the symposium were the Open Democracy bloggers. When I revisited their site recently I came across a fascinating piece of work on Abu Graib by Giuseppe Di Bella in the form of a series of postage stamps.
link: The Abu Ghraib Stamps
link: Story behind the Abu Ghraib stamps
Update: Lately we’ve had some comments elsewhere about the merit of these images and about an artist re-using the images.
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This is my interpretation of this art.
These scenes depicted in these images are brutal and shocking although I scarcely scrutinise them or feel shocked as I’ve seen them countless times before in the media. The messages and information revealed by the photos are multilayered, deep and revealing. They tell us about the culture of abuse within the US army, the rift of understanding and compassion between Iraqis and the US, the use of photography within popular culture as a document, the imbalance of power between the US and the rest of the world, the arrogance, ignorance and brutality of the US army, the role of sex in power and perhaps the replay of sex abuse viewed on the internet or on video.
The use of the images in the postage stamp art highlights the intersection of the images with culture, power and media. They are American citizens performing the cruel acts and they are depicted on US stamps. The stamps have been franked. Beyond the images the stamps are presented in an ordinary matter of fact way, like billions of other stamps that have been used before. This ordinary-ness seems to be a comment about the currency that the brutal images hold. It seems to say that they have lost their shock value in the constant reuse on tv and in printed and digital media. It could also be saying that this cruelty is tacitly accepted by some Americans as par for course in war. Accepted by those in power who sanctioned their use as postage stamps (in this fiction), this could parallel the sanctioning of abuse by those in power (in real life). Accepted by those civilian Americans who use the stamps to send their mail (in this fiction), this could parallel those Americans who benefit from the commercial fallout of war, the shareholders of the contracting companies profiting from reconstruction, the arms companies, the ordinary Americans who benefit from the economic clout the US gains from its military strength and abuse of that strength.
I think this art is a clever way of commenting on the intersection of commerce, power, the complicitness of the public and the currency of the images. It got me thinking.
Gerry, Was any thought and or did you contact someone about copyright before you used the images as your “ART”. Will you follow the series up with images of dead Americans on Omaha Beach in WW II who Liberated your country so you could produce this trash. You could have been speaking German. your “ART only looks to inflame The riots in paris, bombings in Britian all by a radical sector of a religion will continue helped by people with mindsets like you. And in conclusion reading the following by the Webmaster and or owner of this List disturbs me ” When I revisited their site recently I came across a fascinating piece of work” Very sad commentary from a misguided soul
‘Rob’ said: “Very sad commentary from a misguided soul” … Oh, so true, but not in the way I think you meant it
Hi Rob,
So the artist should have sought permission from the photoraphers? Perhaps you think they should be paid royalties too!
As I said “It could also be saying that this cruelty is tacitly accepted by some Americans as par for course in war.”
Distilling down your poorly punctuated, tenuous, and inaccurate argument I think this is where you stand? You don’t acknowledge the crime that was commited by the prison guards? You don’t accept criticism of the army and those in power? It’s probably this sort of view which motivated the artist and vindicates the production of this type of art.
Gerry