Regarding the Spectacle of Others

Giordano Cioni

School of Media, Arts and Design

Photography and Film Department
University of Westminster
August 2013

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters in

Photojournalism
  

Abstract

Media images play a very important role in the U.S. political arena. Over the past
decades the notion of “the spectacle” developed by Guy Debord in 1967 as part of
Situationist International theories has been recuperated and revised in postmodern
discourse into a tool to describe the functioning of the contemporary politico-media
complex. In the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 attacks and the consequent
“War on Terror,” many authors have read in spectacular terms images depicting the
collapse of the towers and the events that highlighted the U.S. military response in
Afghanistan and Iraq. These interpretations posit a passive spectatorship manipulated
with mind-numbing images, whilst framing the media industry as a force of
domination that monitors our understanding of history to its own advantage. If very
seductive speculations, these theories have only a thin connection with the media
system they criticize and run the risk of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. This
dissertation aims to challenge such a view of media images as patronizing and
obsolete, by providing alternative readings of the post-9/11 coverage. By expanding
primary sources beyond mainstream reporting to more critical as well as radical use of
images, I hope to provide a more complex understanding of the way media operated in
the face of this new war. Through a rigorous and critical observation of this wide-
ranging material, I ultimately hope to return the spectator a role of proactive viewer,
capable of contributing to the process of interpreting the surrounding world.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction p. 4

2. Chapter I – Debordian Analysis of Ambiguous Reporting p. 10

The Ubiquitous Spectacle
The Uninformed Spectacle

3. Chapter II – The New Possibilities of Media p. 24

The Reflective Image
The Insolent Image
The Urgent Image

4. Conclusion – The Emancipated Spectator p. 47

5. List of Illustrations p. 50

6. Bibliography p. 75

7. Acknowledgments p. 85

  2  
  

Accusing the accusers is beside the point. On the other hand, what is
worthwhile is to rescue the analysis of images from the trial-like
atmosphere in which it is still so often immersed. The critique of the
spectacle has identified it with Plato’s denunciation of the
deceptiveness of appearances and the passivity of the spectator. The
dogmatists of the unrepresentable have assimilated it to the religious
controversy over idolatry. We must challenge these identifications of
the use of image with idolatry, ignorance or passivity, if we want to
take a fresh look at what images are, what they do and the effects they
generate.1

Jacques Rancière

                                                                                                               
1
Rancière, J., The Emancipated Spectator (2009) London: Verso, p.95.

  3  
  

Introduction

In contemporary culture, print, broadcast and online media provide a non-stop

feed of news from all over the world, portraying the most relevant events in our global
political, social and environmental scenarios. Technology allows such events to be
easily distributed and circulated around the world in images, bringing them inside our
schools, offices and living rooms so that even those uninterested in current affairs find
it impossible not to come across them.
Events that we can witness through images become the catastrophes, conflicts
and debates that we pay attention to and our judgement and evaluations are ultimately
made upon their circulation. For instance, the humanitarian aid and international
financial support towards the nations affected by the 2004 Tsunami earthquake was
largely mobilized by the extensive media coverage of the disaster unfolding and its
terrible aftermath, arguably colonizing public attention for weeks.
Because of the significant role images play in our global visual culture Marina
Warner argued that: “the images we circulate have the power to lead events, not only
to report them,”2 implying a possible use of images as instruments for the
manipulation of public opinion.
With the advent of neoliberalism, the political relation between media and power
has been explored in far too many books to mention.3 One important text for this
debate is Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (1967) that appeared as part of the
theories of the radical organization of revolutionaries Situationist International (SI),
who aimed to criticize societies under advanced capitalism via the Marxist critique of
alienation.4
Most importantly, in the past two and half decades, the complex concept of “the
spectacle” originally developed as part of such theories found a new place in
postmodern discourse. Some authors operating under the rubric of Media and Cultural

                                                                                                               
2
Warner, M., Disembodied Eyes, or the Culture of Apocalypse (2005) Open Democracy,
available from: http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-photography/article_2431.jsp.
3
Later in the essay we will briefly consider Noam Chosky’s Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988). Two more texts considering different
perspectives are: McChesney, R. The Problem of the Media (2004) New York: Monthly
Review Press or Couldry, N., The Place of Media Power (2000) New York and London:
Routledge.
4
Debord, G., Society of the Spectacle (1983) Detroit: Black & Red.

  4  
  

Studies revised the notion using it as a tool through which such images disseminated
by media could be approached.
In resurrecting the spectacle in this new postmodern form these critics reinterpret
Guy Debord’s theories in the light of the relationship between contemporary American
politics and popular media, reattributing to the spectacle its original Debordian
purpose: that is, as an instrument of political and social analysis in consumer societies.
In Debord’s theory the spectacle was used to describe the human condition in
societies where a modern state of mass-production prevails. According to Debord, in
order to maintain such a high level of commodity production, capitalist systems need
to be more in control of images. The opening assertion that “Everything that was
directly lived has moved away into a representation”5 clearly sets us in the context of
the changing relationship between real experience and its mediated representations in
modern life. In this society, independent images have replaced reality with the
spectacle, with devastating effects on our perception of reality as an illusion.
According to Debord everyday life is colonised by the constant bombardment of
images that filter and mediate human experience, and the overwhelming bulk of
images compel the public to play the role of passive spectator. The spectacle demands
obedience; its one-sided dialogue rules out any possibility of response. As a result the
audience is led to a position of conformity, depoliticization, and passivity that
relentlessly erodes any viable notion of critical engagement.
In general terms, the spectacle has been recuperated to theorize the triumph of
sensationalism over accuracy, imagery over literacy, distraction over understanding:
sharp representations of an always paler reality describing the current state of
journalism and mass media in consumer societies, especially in North America. In this
general application, the spectacle has been used in the communal use of language
without even the need to specify its origin in SI theories.6

                                                                                                               
5
Ibid, thesis I.
6
For instance the new best seller Empire of Illusion by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris
Hedges, which in the headline of the title adds: “The End of Literacy and the Triumph of
Spectacle” [emphasis added], never quotes Debord, nor states anywhere else in the book that
the word “spectacle” comes from his theories. However, the essay relates mainly to the current
state of consumer capitalist America where celebrity culture, reality shows and TV
infotainments dominate the screen, filling the dullness of content with spectacular imagery and
appealing headlines that blurs our sense of reality, blocking understanding and causing the
collapse of our moral and ethical standards. This is similar to the alienated spectator Guy
Debord describes in his society. From: Hedges, C., Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009) New York: Nation Books.

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An example of how the spectacle has been employed by critics specifically to

describe the way media operates in contemporary culture and politics,7 is the 1993
book Media Spectacles, a collection of essays dealing with many topics edited by
Harvard University researchers Marjorie Garber, Jann Marlock and Rebecca
Walkowitz.8 Although Debord’s name does not appear in the introduction of the book,
a direct reference is given by the cover of the original 1993 Routledge edition that cites
explicitly the cover of the Black & Red 1983 edition of Society of the Spectacle.9 Both
covers feature a cinema audience wearing what could possibly be 3D glasses, which
deform the images projected on the screen. By metaphor, these objects allude to the
filter that media applies to our understanding of reality. Furthermore, if the cinema
stage casts the audience as passive spectators, it also establishes a correspondence
between Society of the Spectacle and the world of mass media, which is the focus of
the 1993 book.10
Additionally, the introduction of Media Spectacles states the approach that all its
constituent essays have in common: the critical position towards a media system that
authorizes the events described to be “spectacular.” These articles focus not only on
how media modify and, to a certain extent, produce “our illusions and realities”11
relevant for “today’s crises in meaning, identity, and politics.”12 They conclude:

In an era of global technology, instant news, infomercials, electronic

town meetings, and made-for-TV “documentaries”, the boundaries
between news and analysis, news and entertainment, news and fiction
are constantly shifting.13

As in Debord’s society, real life (news, analysis) and the spectacular

                                                                                                               
7
The notion of the “spectacle” presented here is limited to its mass media application, and
does not include other aspects of the concept in relation, for example, to urban planning or
advertising, other fields to which Debord applies the spectacle.
8
Garber, M., Marlock, J. and L. Walkowitz, R., Media Spectacles (1993) New York and
London: Routledge.
9
Illustrations 1, 2.
10
It is worth remembering here that according to Debord mass media are only the spectacle’s
“most glaring superficial manifestation”. Associating the spectacle purely to mass media is in
fact a limited use of the notion which mediates every aspect of social life and does not limit its
power to the one of the screen. Debord, G., Society of the Spectacle (1983) Detroit: Black &
Red, thesis 24.
11
Garber, M., Marlock, J. and L. Walkowitz, R., Media Spectacles (1993) New York and
London: Routledge, Introduction p. xi.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid, p. xiii.

  6  
  

(entertainment, fiction) are not separable, but rather invade one another. For this
reason the authors feel the need to look again at events analysed in media, such as the
AIDS spread of the nineties, in order to comprehend and revaluate them, not to let the
authority of reality disappear in the fantasy of its representation.
For the sake of the analysis that will follow in the next chapter, it is worth
analysing one more of the spectacle’s application in the context of a specific event, the
Persian Gulf War (1990-91).
The U.S.-led Coalition force waged a war against Iraq following Kuwait’s
invasion by Iraqi troops in August 199014 met with U.N. Security Council and
international condemnations.15 The initial conflict to expel Iraqi troops began with
aerial bombardments in January 1991 under the name Operation Desert Storm (ODS),
fought through February when Saddam Hussein declared Iraq’s withdrawal. In
retrospect the outcome of the war, which accounted for thousands of military as well
as civilian losses, has been seen as an ambiguous, strategic conflict for the U.S. state in
the Persian Gulf, a region rich of oil.16 The controversial and manipulated media
coverage of this event heightened its status as spectacle.
The new satellite technology allowed the Gulf War to be the first conflict in
history to be reported live, by American broadcast channel CNN, as events unfolded.
One million people over 108 countries worldwide watched it with horror and
fascination on their TV screens.17 Despite the abundant reporting, a new level of
military control over reportage and press imagery was involved, resulting in a very
manipulated vision of the war.18 This opened a debate about the near-total Western
control of news regarding international conflicts. The most widespread account of the
                                                                                                               
14
Bush, G., H.W., Address on Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait, 1990 (Aug 8, 1990) Council on
Foreign Relations, available from: http://www.cfr.org/iraq/president-george-hw-bushs-
address-iraqs-invasion-kuwait-1990/p24117.
15
Lewis, P., The Iraqi Invasion; U.N. Condemns the Invasion with Threat to Punish Iraq (Aug
3, 1990) The New York Times, available from:
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/03/world/the-iraqi-invasion-un-condemns-the-invasion-
with-threat-to-punish-iraq.html.
16
Nye, J.S., Why the Gulf War Served the Nation Interest (Jul 1991) The Atlantic Monthly.
Available from: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/91jul/nye.htm.
17
Ross, A., The Ecology of Images, from: The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life (1994)
London: Verso, p. 163-164.
18
That is, for instance, the restriction imposed on media by the U.S. government to show or
report civil casualties, whose overall amount is still not entirely clear, due to general
Schwarzkopf instruction not to keep a count. From: Cooper, S.D., Press Control in Wartime:
The Legal, Historical and Institutional Context (2003) American Communication Journal,
available from: http://ac-journal.org/journal/vol6/iss4/iss4/articles/cooper.htm.

  7  
  

media coverage of that war is that the image triumphed over the reality that it
somehow concealed.19
In this context, Debord’s Society of the Spectacle has been employed to describe
the manipulative reporting that emphasised the heavy bombardment inflicted by U.S.
and allied military forces to Iraqi armed and civil infrastructure during the final ODS.
Some authors that either directly or indirectly cite Debord and speak of “spectacle”
within the Gulf War are; Elaine Scarry, Mark Crisping Miller, Andrew Ross, Douglas
Kellner.20 In his essay The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991), Jean Baudrillard
considered the seductive possibility of the Gulf War purely as a “simulacrum” of
war,21 that is, an event that loses its identity in its mediation.22 The spectacle, in this
context, promoted a critical lobotomy in order to legitimize this strategic military
engagement in the name of George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order.”23
A specific example in which the spectacle is used in this context is W.T.J.
Mitchell’s account in the essay Culture Wars (1992). Mitchell limits his scope to the
television coverage arguing that CNN “real time” live depiction of the war was
nothing but a spectacle technically and strategically produced by media managers as an
opinion-management experiment.24 According to Mitchell, war and media are linked

                                                                                                               
19
A collection of essays including writings by such media critics as Noam Chomsky, George
Garbner or the BBC U.N. correspondent Erskine B. Childers grouped under the allusive
title Triumph of the Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf – A Global
Perspective (1992) explores the possibility of a fully orchestrated media reporting that
shadowed facts. They outlined various issues like the press restrictions with regards to
casualties, or the absence of a global perspective in reporting the events, mainly to the whole
world relying on CNN’s first “live” portrait. From: Mowlana, H., Gerbner, G., Schiller,
H., Triumph of the Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf – A Global Perspective (1992)
Oxford: Westview Press.
20
See for instance: Scarry, E., Watching and Authorizing the Gulf War, from: Garber, M.,
Marlock, J. and L. Walkowitz, R., Media Spectacles (1993) New York & London: Routledge,
Ross, A., The Ecology of Images, from: The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life (1994) London:
Verso and, Kellner, D., The Persian Gulf TV War (1992) New York: Westview Press.
21
Baudrillard, J., The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991) Sydney: Power Publications.
22
The simulacrum is another important notion for the postmodern discourse on media.
Baudrilland developed it in his most famous essay Simulacra and Simulation (1988). Here a
“simulacrum” is described as a representational copy or sign that ends up proceeding its own
referent, substituting it and creating another level of the real, the “hyperreal”. From:
Baudrillard, J., Simulacra and Simulation (1981) Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press.
23
Bush, G.W.H., After the War: The President: Transcripts of President’s Bush Address on
End of Gulf War (Mar 07, 1991) The New York Times, available from:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/07/us/after-war-president-transcript-president-bush-s-
address-end-gulf-war.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
24
Mitchell, W.T.J., Culture Wars (April 1992) London Review of Books, Vol. 14, No. 8.

  8  
  

not just in the media’s attempt to publicize the war to a “dazzled American public;”
rather they are connected as the war itself is waged by means of publicity – the control
of the TV representation is “crucial to its success as the control of the battlefield.”25
Therefore, such a “spectacle of war” is essentially media’s attempt to portray a
high-technological “positive” war through an “abstract” image, similar to a “video
game”26 display freed from vivid on-the-ground scenarios that conveys a completely
new visual style and narrative of war. Mitchell in fact compares the visual output of
the Gulf War to that of the Vietnam War, whose brutality has been extensively
documented by thousands of vivid photographs of dead bodies, American casualties,
mutilations and on-ground destruction, that Mitchell regarded as contributing to the
dwindling of public support that ultimately resulted in the U.S. defeat.27 Mitchell
argues that ODS was portrayed as an utopian reconstruction of World War II (WWII),
with a great deal of television footage focusing on aerial superiority that fulfilled the
fantasy of victory over Saddam Hussein represented as Hitler reincarnated.28 Mitchell
claims that the spectacle, shaped in this particular narrative structure along with
manoeuvred images, led to an effortless moral acceptance of the war with little
questioning from the public.
Whether applied in general terms, in the context of mass media or specifically
related to war representation, the new wave of cultural and social criticism that
reawakens Debord’s notion outlines the theoretical and political presuppositions that,
even in this new postmodern form, remain at the heart of today’s debate of the
spectacle. In resurrecting the concept such scholars reengage its power for social
control, its subjection of social life to the rules of appearance, and its fundamental
functioning through mass media, instruments for the spectacle’s proliferation. As a

                                                                                                               
25
Ibid, p. 4.
26
Ibid, p. 8.
27
Illustrations 3, 4 are both Pulitzer Prize winners photographs, and both helped to push the
Vietnam War into being recognized as on of the greatest political disasters of all times. They
had a profound effect of the Vietnam protest movement, the ramifications of which led the
Vietnam War to be considered one of the most unpopular war in American history.
28
Mitchell makes very limited visual examples. However, when referring to the war as
“abstract” he mentions the “smart bomb” which whom he intends the precision guiding aerial
bombardments addressed to various targets as in Illustrations 5, 6. With aerial superiority
recalling a utopian WWII scenario Mitchell probably refers to the heavily televised images of
U.S. Air Forces like the F15Es, a dual-role aircraft capable of all weathers attacks as well as
fighter missions, or to the F-117A with its radar-evading shape as in illustration 7. Mitchell
considers the constant attention to this kind of images a fraudulent piece of historical
representation.

  9  
  

result, the position of the spectator described is ultimately framed as a negative one –
precluded from the possibility of both knowing and acting. Implicitly, media are
framed as negative tools at disposal of the dominant powers, rendering the audience
uncritical by seducing them with appealing images.
The following chapter will deal extensively with the application of the spectacle
in the context of what has been described as “the most documented event in history,”29
the September 11th attacks and the consequent “War on Terror,” engaging with the
countless reasons for a Debordian analysis of such events. The diagnosis in regard to
the position of the spectator (passive and depoliticized), and its relation with media
(oppressive and controlling), will persist in this case study.
Yet, in analysing new theorists, this dissertation aims also to outline the
generalization at the heart of this criticism: this theory excludes any possible good use
of images, even in the contemporary changing global media culture where more
possibilities for critique are offered. Since the advent of neoliberalism much of the
left-oriented discourse on media dismisses these vehicles, failing to recognize its
critical and radical possibilities.
This dissertation is originated by the necessity to reconstruct the presuppositions
that place the question of the spectator at the heart of the discussion of the relations
between contemporary media and politics. In the second chapter, by engaging with
representation of the 9/11 attacks and the “War on Terror” that provide a critical stance
on the way the same events have been reported in mainstream media, this dissertation
will try to subvert the assumption of media as ultimate bad thing, and its implicit
impossibility to be used as democratic educational tools, to inform spectators over
distracting them.
Through a detailed analyses of wide-ranging material, I ultimately hope to
demonstrate the capacity of images to act as agents of social and political awareness,
towards, in Rancière’s words, the emancipation of the spectator. This dissertation will
engage with forms of media that, like Brecht’s Epic Theatre, which used images in
order to re-awaken the critical faculty of the audience as opposed to eroding it with
fascination,30 engaged with the possibilities of the representation of this new war
towards criticism, intervention and change.
                                                                                                               
29
HBO, In Memoriam: New York City, 9/11/01 (2002) [DVD].
30
Benjamin, W., The Epic Theatre, from: The Author as Producer (Jul-Aug 1970) New Left
Review, I/62, pp. 6-7.

  10  
  

Chapter I – Debordian Analyses of Ambiguous Reporting

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, nineteen terrorists belonging to the

Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes, successfully
crashing two into the World Trade Center (WTC) in lower Manhattan and a third into
the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and killing 2,977 people.31 Fear and chaos spread
throughout the United States in the days that followed, disrupting the airline industry,32
as well as New York and global stock markets.33
President George W. Bush subsequently called for the “War on Terror,” and on
October 7th, 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) began with the U.S.-led
coalition attacking Afghanistan, targeting Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, as
well as the extreme fundamentalist Taliban government. Shortly after, Bush signed the
Patriot Act, to strengthen domestic security and broaden the powers of law-
enforcement agencies with regard to identifying and stopping terrorists.34 The war in
Afghanistan continues to this day.
Throughout 2002 and 2003, the Bush Administration had cited the possibility of
Saddam Hussein acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD), posing a direct threat
to the United States. On March 19th, 2003, Bush outlined the purpose of invading Iraq:
“to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger,”35 and
the U.S.-led coalition began its military strikes against targeted members of Saddam
Hussein’s regime. For the first time in decades, embedded journalists were granted
unrestricted access to military operations, bringing frontline action to millions.
Embedding the media to a particular troop unit had a multitude of disadvantages as in

                                                                                                               
31
CNN Library, September 11 Anniversary Fast Facts (2013) available from:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts.
32
Donnelly, S., The Day the FAA Stopped the World (Sep 14, 2001) TIME, available from:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,174912,00.html.
33
Altman, A., Romero, F., Wall Street Meltdowns – September 17 2001, (2013) TIME,
available from:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1845523,00.html.
34
PBS, President Bush Signs Anti Terrorism Bill, (2001) available from:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/terrorism/july-dec01/bush_terrorismbill.html.
35
Long, B., Bush: ‘No outcome except victory’ (2003) CNN, available from:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/19/sprj.irq.war.bush/.

  11  
  

many instances journalists were cut off from information regarding the wider
circumstances of the war, reporting merely what they could see.36
The Hussein regime officially collapsed in April 2003 as the U.S. and the allied
military gained control over Iraq’s capital. On May 1st, 2003, Bush claimed, “major
combat operations in Iraq have ended.”37 Despite the President’s call of victory,
resistance movements and fundamentalist militias on domestic, foreign and civilian
targets moved significantly against American plans to build a democracy.
In July 2004, the 9/11 Commission released its final report on the events leading
up to the September 11th attacks, stating that there was no operational link between
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, contradicting one of the justifications for going to war
with Iraq.38
Fighting between insurgent forces and Coalition forces broke out with major
battles in Fallujah, Ramadi, and throughout Bagdad.
The search for WMD officially ended on January 12th, 2005 after none were
found.39
On January 30th, 2005 the Americans held Iraq’s first democratic elections with
a Shiite coalition winning the most votes in both sets of parliamentary elections. This
further inflamed the Sunni insurgency bringing new worries to the U.S. as Iraq stood at
the brink of civil war. In 2007, the Bush Administration increased the number of
troops in Iraq with figures higher than the initial invasion force in 2003. “The surge”
allowed the creation of small operating bases in some of the most violent
neighbourhoods to halt the insurgency.40
In December 2011 the last U.S. troops left Iraq, after a conflict lasting almost
nine years and involving 1.5 million military troops. The war claimed the lives of
4,488 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. In total, more than $700

                                                                                                               
36
Stallabrass, J., Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images (2013) Brighton:
Photoworks, pp. 35-38.
37
CNN, Bush makes historic speech aboard warship (2003) available from
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/01/bush.transcript/.
38
Posner, R., The 9/11 Report: A Dissent, (2004) The New York Times, available from
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/books/the-9-11-report-a-
dissent.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
39
Borger, J., There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (Oct 07, 2004) The Guardian,
available from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/07/usa.iraq1.
40
NBC News, U.S. Troop level in Iraq climbs to record high (2007) available from:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20622840/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/us-troop-level-iraq-
climbs-record-high/#.Ug_fwWTwKA0.

  12  
  

billion was spent on financing the Iraq War.41 The situation in Iraq today is no better:
this past month the Italian Corriere della Sera published new information describing
the most violent Ramadan since 2007, which could bring Iraq back to the verge of civil
war.42

***

The 9/11 attacks and the events that characterized the U.S. military response
under the name “War on Terror” lend themselves to Debordian analysis for a multitude
of reasons. In order to understand their nature we cannot separate these events from
their status as global media events; to comprehend the shape of their architecture we
need to recognize the fundamental role of media in their structure.
The images of the burning towers and their rapid collapse were inevitably
captured by global television coverage in a “perfectly choreographed” attack aimed at
the symbol of capitalism,43 and subsequently indelibly carved in the memory of the
watching audience.
In response, the U.S. state’s reaction with its emphasis on media-staged events –
with “Shock and Awe” night bombings over Baghdad as the main example of military
actions designed for the lenses44 – sought to generate counter-images. Both were
experienced with fear and fascination through the portraits media shaped in our
collective imagination day after day. The embedding of journalists in Afghanistan and
Iraq is another of the Pentagon’s innovations regarding the media, which, with its
narrow view, fit the demands for spectacular live reports and aimed to produce a
censored and sanitized view of the war.45 All these and other reasons that will follow
once again highlighted the spectacular quality of the facts coming out of this complex
historical reality.
                                                                                                               
41
Sastry, A., Wiersema, A., 10 Year Iraq War Timeline (Mar 19, 2013) ABC News, available
from: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/10-year-iraq-war-timeline/story?id=18758663.
42
Corriere della Sera, Baghdad, ondata di attentati: 80 vittime in un solo giorno al termine del
Ramadan (Aug 10, 2013) available from: http://www.corriere.it/esteri/13_agosto_10/baghdad-
attentati-per-fine-ramadan_b71419c8-01e4-11e3-92ac-e02b389c51e0.shtml.
43
Nacos, B.L., Mass-Mediated Terrorism (2007) Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
44
Bromwich, D., The Meaning of Shock and Awe (Mar 09, 2013) The Huffington Post,
available from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/the-meaning-of-shock-and-
_b_2844688.html.
45
Schechter, D., Embedded; Weapons of Mass Deception (2003) Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books.

  13  
  

The word “spectacle” has re-appeared frequently in journalism both to describe

the attacks46 and to highlight the U.S. response.47 In addition, the term appears in the
almost 600-page official 9/11 Commission report investigating the attacks, which
includes information drawn from CIA interrogations of al-Qaeda about the terrorists’
involvement and intent. The Commission reports that Khlid Sheik Mohammed, a
terrorist who would have been part of a second wave of attacks, intended to target the
U.S. economy where the attacks where to be intended as “the spectacle of destruction”
with Sheik Mohammed self-proclaimed as a “superterrorist.”48 Similarly, in an
interview published by PBS, a Staff Sergeant from the U.S. Special Forces Operation
Detachment Alpha (ODA), used the term to describe the way American media
presented the cave complex of Tora Bora, the stronghold of the Taliban and al-Qaeda
during the U.S. invasion in Afghanistan in December 2001. The caves, reported to be
“crazy mazes or labyrinths,” were in fact small rooms, but the “[media] made a
spectacle out of it.”49
These examples underline the legacy of Debord’s term in contemporary 9/11
language even when he is not directly cited. Yet, the real rebirth of this notion
happened in the realm of cultural and social critique, whose theorists drew on Guy
Debord’s thought to describe the nature of the events and their effect on society. Some
of the most significant cultural theorists articulating Debord-influenced positions are:
Jean Baudrillard, the Retort Collective, Julian Strallabrass, and Paul Virilio.50
                                                                                                               
46
A clear example is Mark Danner article for the New York Times Magazine published four
years after the attacks recalling this episode as the jihadists’ strategic “spectacle” with its
implication on the supremacy of the image of the Empire. From: Danner, M., Taking Stock of
the Forever War (Sep 11, 2005) The New York Times, available from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/11/magazine/11OSAMA.html?pagewanted=all&gwh=8873
17B170E26BD22226680D9C0431B9.
47
Similarly, in early demonstrations of “Shock and Awe” night bombardment over Baghdad
New Yorker’s author Nancy Franklin described the “spectacular fashion” in which the attacks
were reported from U.S. and global press. From: Franklin, N., TV Goes to War (Mar 31, 2003)
The New Yorker, available from:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/31/030331ta_talk_franklin.
48
Schmidt, S., New Details Revealed on 9/11 Plans (Jul 23, 2004) Washington Post, p. A19,
available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7380-2004Jul22.html
[emphasis added].
49
PBS, Interview: U.S. Special Forces ODA 572, (2002) available from:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/campaign/interviews/572.html, [emphasis
added].
50
See for instance: Baudrillard, J., The Spirit of Terrorism (2002) New York and London:
Verso, Virilio, P., Ground Zero (2002) New York and London: Verso, Retort, Afflicted Power:
Capital and Spectacle in the New Age of War (2005) London and New York: Verso and,
Stallabrass, J., Spectacle and Terror (January-February 2006) New Left Review, I/37.

  14  
  

Above all, two texts are particularly useful in order to identify the contemporary
use of Debord’s concept: Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (2005) by
Douglas Kellner51 and Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006) by Henry Giroux.52
Both author makes clear that the “spectacle” in the title refers to the concept developed
by Debord in 1967. Most importantly, these are insightful works that revise this notion
in a way that reveals its fundamental role in contemporary debate. In analysing these
texts I will outline the similar implications of their critical positions with regard to the
media, seen as a force of domination, and its effect on the audience, rendered a passive
spectator.

                                                                                                               
51
Kellner, D., Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (2005) Boudler and London:
Paradigm Publishers.
52
Giroux, H.A., Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006) Boudler and London: Paradigm
Publishers.

  15  
  

The Ubiquitous Spectacle

Douglas Kellner provides an extensive revision of Debord’s notion in Media

Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (2005). Kellner utilizes the terms to describe
two different concepts: “media spectacle” and “terror spectacle.” The two concepts are
very similar: both spectacles are used to enforce their respective political agenda, both
utilize mass media as “weapons of mass hysteria,” and both operate in the historical
context of a “media-saturated era.”53
By “terror spectacle,” or “spectacle of terror,” Kellner essentially refers to
terrorist attacks meant to be captured and circulated by mass media. Kellner speaks of
the 9/11 attacks as one case although it was not the first one in history; another
example he mentions are the 1972 Munich Olympic Games where gunmen from the
Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine held some Israeli athletes hostage. Such
acts are orchestrated by a group in order to attract the global audience’s attention
through “dramatic images,” to advocate their cause against the enemy, and spread
terror in the population.54
According to Kellner, the 9/11 attacks were to be intended as a “terror spectacle”
that produced unforgettable images of a vulnerable country,55 which were designed by
the terrorist group al-Qaeda to call attention to their jihad cause, further spreading
terror to the U.S. and Western population. The enormity of this event was in its
symbolic message and extensive reverberation through global media.56
The Bush administration failed to provide a coherent account of what had
happened and media responded by producing a counter-“terror spectacle” to finally
promote Bush’s long-waited opportunity for military actions devised to reorder the
Middle East. According to Kellner, the excessive re-broadcasting of the images of 9/11
was used as a strategy aimed at further dramatizing the event and circulating
speculations about Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorists who had committed
these atrocities, helping to produce the widespread public desire for a military
response. In addition, Bush also employed rhetoric of “good versus evil,” “humanity

                                                                                                               
53
Kellner, D., Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (2005) Boudler and London:
Paradigm Publishers, p. 25.
54
Ibid, p. 26.
55
Illustrations 12, 13.
56
Kellner, D., Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (2005) Boudler and London:
Paradigm Publishers, p. 28.

  16  
  

versus the blood-thirsty,” describing his campaign as a “crusade” or as “Operation

Infinite Justice” which further dramatized the events.57
In short, the State and the media were able to create their own spectacle of terror
using 9/11 images and the threat for further attacks reframing them for their benefit.
So, whereas al-Qaeda used the spectacle to inflict real damage and attract recruits to
their global jihad, the government exploited such images to gain support for imperial
ventures and pass controversial military legislation while distracting the population
from domestic policy failures.
The spectacle is also used to describe the Bush administration’s military
response, with the “War on Terror.” The war fever produced by the State in complicity
with the corporate media results in the “media spectacles” of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Kellner states that in mainstream media the Afghanistan War has been largely
legitimized by patriotic feelings and post-9/11 hysteria. Once the U.S. troops engaged
in this military action, various restrictions were also imposed on TV broadcast
channels and newspapers, all of which resulted in a manipulated vision of the war. For
instance, images of civilian and military casualties were banned from circulation, and
this helped to keep public attention focused on the patriotic response of the troops. The
lack of debate across major U.S. news channels over the necessity of this intervention
intensified the crisis of democracy in the United States.58
Kellner argues that the Iraq War was strategically a second “media spectacle”
used to further distract the population from internal policy failure while producing
positive election prospects for the 2004 Presidential run. In addition, this allowed
George W. Bush to legitimize his military presence in Iraq – a region rich in oil –
despite the uncertain premise for declaring war on Iraq.
One clear example of the use of spectacle in this context is the military doctrine
“Shock and Awe,” based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays
of force to paralyze the adversary’s perception of the battlefield and destroy his will to
fight back.59 In accordance with the military, major U.S. media reported the perfectly
choreographed night bombardment over Baghdad in March 2003. With this doctrine,
the media and the military were inseparable parts of the same political strategy aiming
                                                                                                               
57
Ibid, pp. 30-31.
58
Ibid, pp. 35-38.
59
Illustrations 15.

  17  
  

both to subject the adversary to domination, and alienate the population watching at
distance through spectacular images.
Yet, with the war in Iraq, according to Kellner, more often than not the spectacle
easily turned into the “reversal of the spectacle.” For example, the impeccably staged
event of the U.S. troops pulling down the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos Square,60
subsequent to the fall of his hated regime, provided immediate popularity to the
Pentagon only until subsequent images of looting, anarchy and chaos throughout Iraq,
including some plundering at the National Museum, highlighted the uncertain role of
the U.S. military force in the Middle East.
This reveals that the “politics of spectacle are highly unstable, subject to multiple
interpretations and often generate unanticipated effects (…) Media spectacles are
subject to dialectic reversal as positive images give way to negative ones.”61 To give
two more examples: the highly stylized presentation of Bush piloting a naval aircraft
onto the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 to deliver the live TV victory speech with
a big banner reading “Mission Accomplished” behind him,62 gained him short lived
popularity until new insurgency attacks on U.S. troops drastically rose in August 2003.
Similarly, the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, in which he appeared
dazed and beaten,63 justified the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq until a new scandal
surfaced in April 2004 – pictures of U.S. soldiers humiliating and torturing Iraqi
prisoners in the jail of Abu Ghraib spread out among global press.64
To sum up, Kellner’s revision of Debord’s theory is mainly related to the way
spectacles are utilized in order to distract the population with sensationalist, but
ultimately mind-numbing, “infotainment” narratives or images of terror that aim to
frighten the audience into submission. Kellner provides plenty of examples of events
that, within this historical context, received considerable media attention and colonized
public attention with persistent but often media-staged images.
Yet, Kellner’s critical position carries within itself two assumptions. First, his
interpretations of U.S. military action and the way it was framed by mainstream media
aims to reduce complex historical facts into a series of image-events, oversimplified

                                                                                                               
60
Illustrations 16.
61
Kellner, D., Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (2005) Boudler and London:
Paradigm Publishers, p. 48.
62
Illustrations 17.
63
Illustration 18.
64
These images are intentionally not reproduced.

  18  
  

until the events themselves lose their political and historical perspective. This failure to
provide a scholarly analysis of facts is particularly clear in one example: the ousting of
the Hussein regime, through the lens of Kellner’s spectacle, becomes the striking
image of the toppling of the statue in Firdos Square surrounded by celebrations.
Whether reported spectacularly or not, the collapse of the Hussein regime subverted
the internal organizations of the country, which would eventually result in tensions
between Christians, Shiia and Sunni, as ethnic and religious fights in the face of this
new Iraqi situation continue.
Secondly, Kellner fails to recognize the validity of historical events per se, but
rather recounts them purely as examples of the functioning of the logic of the
spectacle, or read as performances or performative responses to previous
performances. The Shiia militia-led insurgencies that targeted U.S. troops in the days
that followed the ousting of the Hussein regime, are here brought into consideration as
a “reversal of the spectacle” as opposed to events with independent authority and
military valence. They are not accounted for in terms of their political meaning but too
easily categorized as “negative images” in response of previous positive ones.
Flattening complex historical facts into striking media portraits, or describing
them in relation to the images they produced, that inevitably fill the television screens
and newspapers of a country at war, is in my opinion, what makes Kellner’s revision
of Debord’s spectacle into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Regardless of its authority, every
important episode of this part of U.S. history can be easily reduced and read through
this ubiquitous spectacularizing lens of Debordian memory.

  19  
  

The Uninformed Spectacle

In Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006) Henry Giroux provides another

account of Debord’s spectacle in post-9/11 use.65 The initial observation points out the
current crisis of democracy and the undermined social sphere through a new global
uncertainty. This age of fear is promoted by the U.S. state that reinforces moral
indifference and political impotence through promoting appealing media images that
excite and scare, most notably, “shock and awe.” In the current politico-media
complex, Giroux notes that facts are widely mispresented through continuous
bombardments of violent image-based journalism known as “spectacles,” where the
visual is needed in order to brutalize this politics of fear.66
Following the September 11th attacks, or rather images of the attacks,67 public
life has been constantly shaped by images of power where “war,” “fear,” and
“insecurity” become the most powerful principles and instruments for social order,
diminishing the capacity of American public to “weight evidence critically.”68 This
culture of fear isolates individuals and in turn the public collapses into the private;
critical social engagement disappears, giving way to a new impoverished democracy
built around a passive citizenry in a state of paralyzed spectatorship.
This new level of spectacle, which Giroux calls the “spectacle of terrorism,” is
once again defined as a means of political and social control promoted and circulated
by media. Giroux also notes that currently, more so than in the past, media does not
merely change the production and reception of politics, but its whole nature through a
global access, previously limited, and through an ongoing screen culture offered by
technology where images permeate ubiquitously, building a more integrated
relationship between media and power, media and terrorism.69
According to Giroux, violence played a central role in shaping the dynamics and
nature of the “War on Terror” beginning with the rhetoric of “with or against” or
“believer or infidel” employed respectively by George W. Bush and Osama bin

                                                                                                               
65
Giroux, H.A., Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006) Boudler and London: Paradigm
Publishers.
66
Ibid, pp. 7-8.
67
Illustrations 12, 13.
68
Giroux, H.A., Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006) Boudler and London: Paradigm
Publishers, p. 10.
69
Ibid, pp. 15-16.

  20  
  

Laden.70 In media violence was also played out in the whole “war of images”71
inaugurated with the hijacked jetliners crashing into the Twin Towers which gave way
to various counter-images in response from the U.S. state, like the “Shock and Awe”
night bombing over Baghdad,72 the images leaked out of Abu Ghraib jail,73 as well as
continuous attention by broadcast channels to the celebrations of U.S. military in Iraq.
On the other hand, terrorist groups responded to such images with other images of fear
and violence like the killings of U.S. hostages by Iraqi fundamentalists, most notably
the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.74
The distance that Giroux takes from Debord’s own theory is that the new
“violence as theatre” is part of a regime of representation used by the U.S. state to
legitimize the use of force and militarism through submission into fear as opposed to
obedience to consumer culture.
Similarly to the analysis provided by Kellner, Giroux argues that the “spectacle
of terrorism” was used by the Bush administration as a “primary pedagological tool to
incorporate the populace into the racial fantasies of empire and the illusion of national
triumphalism packaged as a victory of civilization over barbarism,”75 that ultimately
legitimized the U.S. state’s long-awaited opportunity to engage the military in the
Middle East.
Yet, whereas Kellner’s 9/11 “terror spectacle” was just another chapter in a long
series of terrorists acts designed to be visible,76 for Giroux the 9/11 “spectacle of
terrorism” suggested something new in the contemporary war of images. This brings
the spectacle to an entire new order, while subtracting from Western power its
hegemony over its control, enabling new forms of resistance for stateless groups too.77
While the relationship between terror and media has a long history, the
September 11th attacks changed the nature of the spectacle. While in its history,

                                                                                                               
70
Ibid, p. 22.
71
Ibid, p. 24.
72
Illustration 15.
73
These images are intentionally not reproduced.
74
These images are intentionally not reproduced.
75
Giroux, H.A., Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006) Boudler and London: Paradigm
Publishers, p. 25.
76
Examples are: the previously mentioned 1972 Olympics, or the 1983 Shiite Muslim suicide
bomber that killed 243 U.S. servicemen in Beirut and led the United States to withdraw its
troops from the on-going war in Lebanon.
77
Giroux, H.A., Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism (2006) Boudler and London: Paradigm
Publishers, p. 27.

  21  
  

through “fascism” and “consumerism”, the spectacle promoted consent by invoking

collective rituals of identification,78 the spectacle of terrorism aims to forge social
relationship around individual fears. So whereas Kellner’s “terror spectacle” frightens
into submission though sensationalistic narratives and images collectively shared,
Giroux’s “spectacle of terrorism” reorders the social through the principle of fear
individually experienced. Both are played via media images.
Also, while the spectacle of fascism and consumerism are different visions of
social control in service of dominant power, with the spectacle of terrorism we ushered
in a new kind of politics where the spectacle is no longer at the disposal of the
consumer state exclusively, although it might still appropriate it. The loss of the
hegemony over the spectacle by Western powers, and its appropriation by stateless
groups such as al-Qaeda is, according to Giroux, what ultimately demonstrated the
vulnerability of the U.S. state and what partly enabled the ascendancy of
fundamentalist religious authorities.79
Therefore, with the “War on Terror” a new heavy militarism was needed in order
to confront this new condition of contemporary politics. This militarism was ultimately
justified by both the violence of the 9/11 attacks, and the subsequent pedagogy of fear
promoted by the U.S. state through media, which suggested that the new terror we
experience cannot be fought without surrendering to a heavy military response. The
U.S. state plays out the authority of this new militarism with images of “Shock and
Awe” that reverberate in global media, while the enemy responds by circulating other
media, like for instance, Internet-based videos of beheadings.
This continuous use of spectacles of terror becomes a “war of images” played on
the media ground, by both the U.S. state and Iraqi fundamentalists where continuous
images of violence and fear become the contemporary principles for social domination.
The deficiency of Giroux’s analysis lies in his limited use of examples of the
spectacle’s manifestations, be they historical facts or even just graphic depictions.
Whereas Kellner reduces complex historical realities into single images, analysed only
in relation to the way they are perceived by Western audience, Giroux mentions few
episodes, unrelated to each other, and following no chronological reconstructions of
facts, demonstrating the uniform position of his criticism.

                                                                                                               
78
Ibid, pp. 28-31.
79
Ibid, pp. 47-48.

  22  
  

Giroux’s insufficient desire to measure his theoretical notion against fact, is what
ultimately leaves the reader in the historical aporia that he condemns as an effect of the
spectacle. For instance, among the spectacles used by the U.S. state to spread terror, he
compares the images of bombardments of “Shock and Awe” with the images depicting
U.S. soldiers torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail, failing to recognize the different
valences of these two sets of images – arguably one media-staged, the other leaked
out.
Giroux’s disinclination to dirty his hands in trying to reconstruct the different
meaning of the spectacles he compares is what ultimately demonstrates that his notion
is mostly uniformed of historical context. His spectacle is more the product of a
seductive abstract assertion to which we can easily succumb, then a scholarly
reconstruction of facts with considerations on the meaning of their graphic depictions.

  23  
  

Chapter II – The New Possibilities of Media

The events of 9/11 and the U.S. military response resulted in a substantial wave
of revaluation of the possibilities for media, both in the news and beyond, given its
new roles and the new social and political situation. Technology and new channels
also opened avenues of distribution of war information unavailable during previous
major U.S. conflicts. Culturally, new phenomena engaged with the representation of
war, resulting in the production of innovative products within the arts and media
aiming to offer a view of the differentiated scope of war reportage in its current
diversity.
Some independent journalists, refusing to work within the embedded system,
travelled across Iraq during the early stages of the conflict on their own terms without
the support of the U.S. troops. Some of the most notable names to work unembedded
were: Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson and Rita Leistner, later grouped as the subject of
book.80 During the periods of greatest violence during the Iraq War, it was also
possible to document the most intense scenes thank to the courage of some Arab
reporters employed by Western media, who risked their lives mixing among insurgents
and militia as most Western correspondents were targets. This is the case, for instance,
of Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who wrote for the Washington Post and The Guardian and
published photographs on The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times among
others.81
The Internet surely played a fundamental role in defining new avenues for the
circulation of information previously unavailable in other U.S. conflicts. Used in a
multitude of different ways, providing alternative readings of the war, the medium
demonstrated itself to be an invaluable platform granting those who sought access to
information that surpassed mainstream portraits. In analysing the voices of the
opposition to the U.S. occupation in Iraq, James Castonguay argues: “the Internet and
the Web not only have offered mainstream media such as WB and CNN new modes of
representation but have also provided new opportunities for expression of dissent.”82

                                                                                                               
80
Abdul-Ahad, G., Alford, K., Anderson, T., Leistner, T., Unembedded: Four Independent
Photojournalists on the War in Iraq (2005) Chelsea Green, VE: White River Junction.
81
Ibid
82
Castonguay, J., Conglomeraton, New Media, and Cultural Production of the War on Terror
(Summer 2004) Cinema Journal, V. 43, p. 102.

  24  
  

This underlines the Internet’s potential not just as an additional platform for mass-
circulation channels but also as a new mode of agency and resistance that offers
opportunities for different readings as well as disagreement.83
The Internet has also provided a platform used not just by alternative voices in
Arab and Western journalism, but by the citizens themselves, amplifying the
possibilities of citizen journalism. Melissa Wall provides an account of the taming
effect of what she defines “warblogs” in the context of the Iraq War. By noticing the
larger engagement from these bloggers, not purely with local matters but with national
and international news, Wall argues that these channels “eventually made themselves
heard on their own terms by the mainstream media, which had initially scorned them.”
Therefore, these blogs provide “points of view that have challenged the narrow
representations of Iraq usually produced by traditional media and thus embody a
fundamental characteristic of citizen journalism – that of expanding the ideological
spectrum for news audiences.”84
Among the innovations that revolutionized the way war information was
produced and circulated, we must count digital technology and its impact on
photography. One relevant example of its influence is proved in the scandal that broke
after shocking images of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib
prison surfaced in spring 2004. Mark Danner, Op-Ed Contributor of The New York
Times recalls that the Red Cross had already reported the “cruel, inhuman and
degrading”85 behaviour of American soldiers to prisoners. But it was only thanks to the
digital technology that facilitated the leak, allowing Americans to see what their
soldiers were doing, that it became a scandal of global interest. This demonstrated the
difficulty for the U.S. state of controlling information after the advent of digital
technology.
Furthering possibilities of representation and amplifying democratic
opportunities is the fact that now more than in the past, global media correspondents

                                                                                                               
83
Some examples: www.arabnews.com, www.albawabaforums.com,
www.english.aljazeera.net, www.caferabica.com, www.adc.org, www.antiwar.com,
www.alternet.org.
84
Wall., M., The Taming of the Warblogs: Citizen Journalism and the War in Iraq, from:
Allan, S. and Thorsen, E., Citizen Journalism: Global Perspective (2009) New York, NY:
Peter Lang Publishing, pp. 33-34.
85
Danner, M., We Are All Torturers Now (Jan 6, 2005) The New York Times, available from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/opinion/06danner.html?pagewanted=print&position=&_r
=0.

  25  
  

report international events. For instance, over the past decades the Arab channel Al-
Jazeera has produced images and information that have often re-circulated among
Western broadcasters. One notable example is the full speech from Osama bin Laden
first aired by Al-Jazeera and later around the world.86
Beyond news media yet still within the medium of photography, new genres
engaged in war representation in new ways such as the so-called “aftermath
photography”. These are bodies of work that focus not on the event itself but rather on
the traces left on the territory. One notable example is Simon Norfolk’s work on
bombarded infrastructure in Baghdad post the U.S. invasion. Sarah James argues that
this particular way of representing war frees the “ambiguity of the former and easily
choreographed form” releasing the photographs “from the exploitative and
instrumental context that sees photojournalism manipulated by the largely conservative
and nationalistically biased media organizations that determine its context and
reception.”87
Among the immense number of media producers who focused on post-9/11
coverage, three photographers are of particular importance in understanding the
complex way media operated in the face of these catastrophes. Pioneer photographer
Joel Meyerowitz, with a body of work focusing on Ground Zero, was the only
photographer to gain unrestricted access to the area in the days that followed the
attacks. Young photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson covered the Iraq War for The New
York Times between 2003 and 2008 producing “some of the most sustained and critical
photography to emerge within the embedding system.”88 Photojournalist Geert van
Kesteren created a body of work later published as Baghdad Calling which embodied
a perspective of citizen journalism, amateur photography and classic reportage,
defining an entirely new genre and distributing it with an unconventional channel.
Through the juxtaposition of different forms of critical media in different channels,
this dissertation aims to bring into view the larger picture of media’s new structure and
the possibilities it plays in the critical understating of our contemporary politics.

                                                                                                               
86
Miles, H., Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World (2005) London: Abacus
Press.
87
James, S., Making an Ugly World Beautiful? Morality and Aesthetics in the Aftermath from:
Stallabrass, J., Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images (2013) Brighton:
Photoworks, pp. 118-119.
88
Stallabrass, J., Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images (2013) Brighton:
Photoworks, p. 16.

  26  
  

The Reflective Image

The “image [was] beyond our imagination”89 recalls ABC News anchor Peter
Jennings who covered the September 11th attacks live for seventeen straight hours,
praised for guiding Americans through the catastrophe, and whose efforts have been
described as “herculean.”90
The image to which Jennings makes reference is the live broadcast at 9.59am
EST, when the South Tower of the WTC suddenly and unexpectedly folded down on
itself and completely collapsed. Through the chaos Jennings did not immediately
realize that the plane crash that he had televised a mere 56 minutes earlier had led to
the complete collapse of the tower itself. This was followed by the collapse of the
North Tower, 29 minutes later.
Don Dahler, ABC’s first network correspondent at the scene of the attacks, who
reported the scene live via telephone from his apartment just four blocks from the
WTC, interrupted Jennings’ live broadcast explaining the catastrophic event as it was
unfolding. Jennings, seemingly still unsure of this possibility, had Dhaler confirm the
disaster: Dhaler, repeating it three times, explained to Jennings that “the whole
building has collapsed.”91
In retrospect, talking about that moment Jennings recalls:

That was very shocking to me. Because now you see the images and it
all seems so cut-and-dried, it all seems so utterly clear. Plane hits, plane
hits, building falls down, building falls down, but it wasn’t that way at all
on the day. We were immersed in confusion, almost suffocated by
chaos.92

Arguably, Jennings’ statement underlines the perspective from which the event
had been framed by cable news channels; during the event “immersed in confusion,”
                                                                                                               
89
National Museum of American History, Excerpt from Exhibition Video; Peter Jennings,
ABC News (2001) available from:
http://amhistory.si.edu/september11/exhibition/video_transcript.html.
90
Shales, T., On Television, The Unimaginable Story Unfolds (Sep 12, 2001) Washington
Post, available from:
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/80389759.html?dids=80389759:80389759
&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT.
91
National Museum of American History, Excerpt from Exhibition Video; Peter Jennings,
ABC News (2001) available from:
http://amhistory.si.edu/september11/exhibition/video_transcript.html.
92
Ibid [emphasis added].

  27  
  

and after, when the performance appears so “utterly clear” to be summarized in the
double repetition; “plane hits, building falls down.”
The work of photographer Joel Meyerowitz provides a contrast with this
simplified narrative. In the days immediately following the destruction of the WTC,
Meyerowitz visited the site with no clear purpose in mind. Standing on public ground
and facing Ground Zero, Meyerowitz attempted to shoot the scene before being
interrupted by a police officer who reminded him that he was at a crime scene where
no photographs were permitted. To Meyerowitz “no photographs meant no history.” 93
Feeling the necessity to document, Meyerowitz gained unimpeded access to the site
beginning September 18th.94 With more than one hundred visits in almost nine
months, Meyerowitz documented the early status of the ruins, followed by further
demolitions, excavations and finally the removal of the tens of thousands of tonnes of
wreckage.
Meyerowitz’s images later created an archive of the destruction and recovery of
Ground Zero, with more than 5,000 photographs now part of the permanent collection
at the Museum of the City of New York. Twenty-eight photographs from the archive
were also included in the travelling exhibition After September 11: Images from
Ground Zero, travelling more than 200 cities in 60 countries and visited by over 3.5
million people.95 On the fifth anniversary of the attacks Phaidon Press published
Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive (2006) containing more than 400 colour
photographs and text by Meyerowitz.96 Smaller selections of this large body of work
have also been published extensively in the press, throughout and upon completion of
the recovery.97
A concise edit of this body of work was published in the May 20th, 2002 issue of
The New Yorker, in an article titled “A Hole in the City.” Ten of Meyerowitz

                                                                                                               
93
Meyerowitz, J., Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive (2011) London: Phaidon Press,
94
The access was also guaranteed thanks to the support of the Museum of the City of New
York.
95
Meyerowitz, J., Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive (2006) London: Phaidon Press
96
Ibid.
97
As noted in an email conversation with the author, some examples of this body of work
published in press include the articles: “Beyond Words” published on The New Yorker on
October 15th, 2001, “Afterimages” published on The Boston Globe on October 24,th 2001, “A
Hole in the City” published on The New Yorker on May 20th, 2002, “American Ground:
Unbuilding the World Trade Center” published on The Atlantic Monthly in the July/August
2002 issue as well as various others.

  28  
  

photographs run across eight spreads are published with accompanying text written by
Elisabeth Kolbert.
The portfolio opens with a double-page spread in which an additional folded
page creates a long 3-page strip over which lies the most unpleasant assembled
panoramic view of the early stage of the ruins.98 The photograph is shot from the top
of the World Financial Center, and pans east across West Street. The elevated
viewpoint allows the frame to include much of the site as well as other elements in the
background. The photograph, dated September 25th, is divided in half as the two piles
of collapsed towers emerge from the ground. A white cloud of dust between the towers
stands out due to its contrast with the dark night sky with an artificial illumination,
further emphasising the surrounding overwhelming sense of destruction. This scenario
is framed by the presence of visible buildings in the background as well as an intact
high-rise in the left edge of the image. While the frame bounds the site, the 3-page
strip provides the sense of scale.
In the second spread the text runs along the left page and is placed next to
another image shot during the early days of the recovery.99 The focus falls on one of
the piles created by the rest of the North Tower containing wall sections that still seem
to stand with a precarious equilibrium. The difference lies in the point of view; no
longer with the privilege of elevation, rather shot below ground from the voids created
by the fallen beams that collapsed into the underground complex. Such point of view
emphasises the instability of the pile. With no visible human presence water trucks
suppress the dust generated in the collapse.
The following two spreads100 focus on a different aspect of this project – the
monumental task of deconstructing the debris field. More than 800 people each day
including ironworkers, engineers, truck drivers, demolition experts and volunteers,
were involved in the recovery of Ground Zero. The first photograph illustrates
ironworkers operating with big cranes clearing the space, and the second portrays a
crane being erected in the proximity of the South Tower. Unlike the first two
photographs, they document the human response to this enormous disaster ultimately
allowing the viewer to relate to the attacks through the connection with the human
presence.
                                                                                                               
98
Illustration 19.
99
Illustration 21.
100
Illustrations 22, 23.

  29  
  

In the fifth spread101 the focus returns to yet another shattering scene. The
viewpoint is ground level facing the pile of rubble that was once the South Tower.
More than two dozen men, mostly firemen and members of the New York Police
Department, gather around a glowing light in the middle under the passive fallen line
of columns as more dead bodies are recovered. This epic scene is carefully composed
in three layers: along the bottom are the men involved in the operation; in the middle
the rubble is lit; and finally framing the image are the buildings in the background,
interrupted only by a blurred distant flag detailed with symbolism. Such composition
provides an underlying order that emerges from the chaos and destruction, reinforcing
the tremendous purpose of the scene descripted. The unity of the workmen conveys a
sense of collective mission. The human connection is the vehicle offered by the
photographer to relate to the catastrophe, this time through the careful composition that
underlines their intention.
In contrast to much of what is taking place in the night spread just described, the
following pages portray the dusty floor of a pre-school day-care centre located across
the street from the North Tower.102 The most visible details include abandoned toys
spread across floor of this unearthly-looking room. The innocence of the toys remind
the viewer of the smaller realities affected by the attacks that are shadowed by the
magnitude of the larger picture.
The following spread is composed of two individual portraits juxtaposed – a
mechanic worker beneath a big grapple103 and a column from the South Tower104 – the
last piece of the building to be removed from the site. This combination underlines two
indivisible subjects within this body of work – the wreckage as the aftermath of the
attacks and the people as their response. It also furthers our understanding of the
function of the site.
The eighth and final spread returns to the elevated view from above.105 Shot in
May 2002 upon near-completion of the entire clean-up, the photograph shows a much
clearer panoramic view of a re-ordered site, void of majority of the wreckage that
previously piled in total chaos. It shows the internal organization of floors of Ground
Zero. Vehicles are orderly parked in various levels of the new organizations. The angle
                                                                                                               
101
Illustration 24.
102
Illustration 25.
103
Illustration 26.
104
Illustration 27.
105
Illustration 28.

  30  
  

slightly more oriented towards north also clearly illustrates West Street open to the
public with cars running along it, blurred light suggest moving traffic, an optimistic
sign of life going on.
The opening and closing photographs of this feature share a similar panoramic
view, and the other images are displayed in monthly order.106 This disposition
generates a strong chronological and emotional narrative that guides the reader through
the long and draining clean-up process that took Ground Zero from its status of total
chaos to one of seeming order. By leading us through the entire process, Meyerowitz’s
photo-essay provides both a figure of immediate material damage and of the effort
invested in its re-ordering. This approach takes a strong ideological stance towards the
way the event was framed by mainstream media. In creating this effective narrative the
reader is informed of the physical consequences of the attacks and the response it
generated, as opposed to being alienated with the single, instantaneous and enormous
performance of the crash and collapse.
It is also important to consider the layout. Meyerowitz’s photographs are framed
in a small white border with the caption underneath the bottom-left corner. The
captions present the scene with an informative sober text, closing with the date. The
choice not to run the images full-bleed while anchoring them with explanatory text
once again outlines the educational nature of Meyerowitz’s photographs. This asks the
reader to measure the catastrophic views with the facts they are meant to represent, as
opposed to allowing their aesthetic quality take over critical understanding. The clever
usage of design and text help us to re-shape the enormity of the catastrophe with
factual information and a logical way of presenting them.
Meyerowitz’s photographs are created using mostly large-format cameras that
permit the highest level of detail within the still image and allow the reader to take a
more reflective look at something they have never seen with such close perspective.
Although some of the images have been published in newspapers,107 the form in which
this work appears, within a cultural critique magazine, also suits their reflective nature.

                                                                                                               
106
This with the only exception to the photograph behind the extra page in the opening spread,
Illustration 20.
107
As noted in an email conversation with the author, some examples of this body of work
published in newspapers include the articles: “9/11: A Year After / Who We Are Now”
published on The Los Angeles Times on September 11th, 2002, “Afterimages” published on
The Boston Globe on October 24th, 2002, and, “Witnessing History at Ground Zero” published
on The New York Times on December 5th, 2003.

  31  
  

Aiming the lens of his camera not at the emblem of the terrorist attacks, but the
wounds imprinted in the territory; choosing to record it not with the moving
performative image, but with the still reflective image; focusing on the entire process
rather than the single instant, Meyerowitz takes a meditative ideological stance toward
the September 11th catastrophe. Methodically recording the work of rescue, recovery,
demolition and excavation he conveys the magnitude of the physical destruction and
the human dimension of the recovery, helping us to reshape the scale of their
perception, relate on a human scale and ultimately inviting us to reflect again upon a
different perspective.

  32  
  

The Insolent Image

Embedded journalism, by which reporters were guaranteed access to battlefields

attached to military units in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been a controversial
object of debate by various media experts and reporters.
Veteran journalist Danny Schechter, former ABC and CNN producer, criticized
the media for having failed to cover the Iraq conflict properly, “cheerleading for a war
in which reporting was sanitized, staged and suppressed”108 through the embedding of
journalists. Some other accounts went as far as describing it a “pro-war propaganda
machine”109 disguised by the U.S. government to pass a new unpopular war and
impose a strict control over information. On the other hand no real alternative was
offered to enable journalists to work outside this system, due to the increasing violence
towards journalists who were considered targets. After all, by its end the Iraq War had
claimed the lives of 204 journalists and media workers, the highest number of fatalities
for press then any other war since WWII.110
One substantial wave of criticism saw the embedding as a tool aimed at further
complicating the relationship between the media and the military, leading to an
unprecedented collaboration that spoilt objectivity. Although the reporters could gain
unrestricted access to war scenes, by being embedded with a particular troop unit it
was believed the journalist would have ended up adopting the position of the soldier
over the citizen, or becoming too sympathetic towards the behaviour of the unit.111
In addition to this, a further criticism exposes the necessarily narrower view that
war reporters posses under embedding. What can be seen is only a small part of the
whole war, failing to engage with the larger picture. Los Angeles Times writer and
Pulitzer Prize winner David Zucchino, veteran war correspondent with over two
                                                                                                               
108
Schechter, D., Embedded; Weapons of Mass Deception (2003) Amherst: Prometheus
Books, available from:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Embedded_Weapons_of_Mass_Deception.html?id=fmJt
AAAAMAAJ.
109
Tousto, K., The “Grunt Truth” of Embedded Journalism; the New Media/Military
Relationship (2008) Stanford Journal of International Relations, p. 1., available from:
http://sjir.stanford.edu/pdf/journalism_real_final_v2.pdf.
110
Fung. K., Record Number of Journalists Killed During the Iraq War: Committee To Protect
Journalists (Mar 19, 2013) The Huffington Post, available from:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/iraq-war-killed-journalists_n_2907550.html.
111
Cockburn, P., Embedded Journalism; a Distorted View of War (Nov 23, 2010) The
Independent, available from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/embedded-
journalism-a-distorted-view-of-war-2141072.html

  33  
  

decades of experience in covering conflicts such as Bosnia, Chechnya, Ethiopia and

Libya, wrote about his experience covering Iraq:

[The embedding] could be suffocating and blinding. Often I was too

close or confined to comprehend the war’s broad sweep. I could not
interview survivors of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. soldiers or speak to
Iraqi fighters trying to kill Americans. I was not present when Americans
died at the hands of fellow soldiers in what the military calls “frat” for
fratricide. I had no idea what ordinary Iraqis were experiencing. I was
ignorant of Iraqi government decisions and U.S. command strategy.112

A completely different understanding of the system is provided by Australian

photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson who instead argued that “photographers have
always been embedded with their subjects. The only difference is that now the
Pentagon has come up with an ugly name for it.”113 In February 2003, the then 25-
year-old reporter was travelling through Kurdistan, the Kurdish enclave of Northern
Iraq, photographing the refugees who as a result of the 1991 Gulf War had been sent to
the Turkish camps to escape Iraqi forces. With the American government imposing a
“no-fly zone,”114 the more than one million Kurds in the area have had autonomy from
Baghdad with their militia and government since.
Gilbertson recalls that it was never his intention to become a war photographer,
yet he found himself photographing the first fighting in the north of Iraq between
Kurdish militia (backed by US Special Forces) and Ansar al-Islam, terrorist jihadist
group, before the war even broke out.115 Following Baghdad’s fall under the U.S.
occupation, Gilbertson decided to expand his focus from the Kurds to the entire war.
As the Special Forces units fought their way to Kirkuk and Mosul resulting in violent
bombings,116 he decided to embed with the U.S. Army.

                                                                                                               
112
Katovsky, B., Carlson, T., Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq (2003) Guilford: The
Lyons Press, p. 142.
113
Castoro, R., Ashely Gilbertson (2008) VICE, available from: http://vice.com/read/ashley-
gilbertson-147-v15n7.
114
BBC News, No-fly zones: The legal position (Feb 19, 2001) available from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1175950.stm.
115
Gilbertson, A., Whiskey, Tango, Foxton (2007) Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, p. 9.
116
CNN, U.S. reinforcements arrive in Kirkuk (Apr 11, 2003) available from:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/10/sprj.irq.kirkuk/.

  34  
  

The New York Times (NYT) first approached Gilbertson to report the conflict
between Kurds and Arabs in Kirkuk with Sabrina Tavernise. Since then he has covered
much of the Iraq War for the publication through 2008.
Between 2003 and 2004 Gilbertson’s photographs appeared in over thirty NYT
front-page articles.117 The list includes: Abu Hishma under the controversial
occupation of Colonel Sassaman118 – forced to retire after two men from his platoon
were found guilty for killing two civilians in the Tigris River119 – in January 2004, the
Sunni insurgents’ attacks in the holy city of Karbala in March 2004,120 the 3-day
combat of the Samarra battle in October 2004, and finally the major battle in Fallujah
in November 2004 that resulted in seven days of intense combat against the insurgents
controlling the city, and accounted for the destruction of the Grand Mosque.121
Gilbertson worked alongside top NYT reporters like Dexter Filkins, Rick Lyman,
Robert Worth and Edward Wong.
In addition to the 30 plus front-page NYT features, Gilbertson published the
book Whiskey, Tango, Foxton (2008) that showcases most of his work in Iraq and
includes images that, due to press restrictions, did not make it into the paper.122 After
witnessing looting and widespread anarchy in Mosul and Baghdad in the early days of
the war, just after Hussein’s regime collapsed, Gilbertson immediately lost faith in any
possible beneficial result of the U.S. military operation in Iraq. Any previous
justification in overthrowing the brutal regime, whose horrors he documented in
Kurdistan before the war broke out, were long lost.

                                                                                                               
117
Gilbertson, A., Whiskey, Tango, Foxton (2007) Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, p. 238.
118
Filkins, D., A Region Inflamed: Strategy; Tough New Tactics by U.S. Tighten Grip on Iraq
Towns (Dec 07, 2003) The New York Times, available from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/world/a-region-inflamed-strategy-tough-new-tactics-by-
us-tighten-grip-on-iraq-towns.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
119
Filkins, D., The Fall of the Warrior Kind (Oct 23, 2005) The New York Times, available
from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/magazine/23sassaman.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
120
CNN, Deadly attacks rock Baghdad, Karbala (Mar 2, 2004) available from:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/02/sprj.nirq.main/.
121
Spinner, J., Vick, K., U.S. and Iraqi Troops Push Into Fallujah (Nov 9, 2004) Washington
Post, available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33546-
2004Nov8.html.
122
Gilbertson, A., Whiskey, Tango, Foxton (2007) Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press.

  35  
  

Advantaged by his Australian nationality that made him less suspicious at the
eyes of the American troops,123 along with his courage in travelling always with the
first units, exposed to the worst combat brutality,124 Gilbertson produced some of the
most critical photographic work towards the U.S. military conduct and its
consequences on the Iraqi situation. After all Gilbertson’s own belief is that:

Americans lost the war, and in losing it, turned Iraq’s people against
each other with greater fury then what had been exacted on them for the
last four years. They broke Iraq apart, and its people are devouring the
pieces – and themselves.125

It is worth analysing two groups of images from the photographer depicting two
of the most relevant U.S. military operations both published in the NYT: the battle of
Samarra in October 2004, and, inevitably, the violent battle in Fallujah in November
2004. This last body of work won Gilbertson the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award
from the Overseas Press Club.
The Samarra battle, which took place over three days beginning on October 1st,
2004, was the first large military engagement in Iraq with over 5,000 troops, 3,000 of
which were Americans. The Coalition planned to retake the city that had recently
fallen under the control of Sunni insurgents. Ashley Gilbertson and Rick Lyman were
guaranteed access to the city through the troops, whereas Dexter Filkins was reporting
from Baghdad. The event was covered in the NYT with two front-page articles, both
featuring Gilbertson’s photographs.
The first article,126 featured on the October 2nd front page, outlines the military
actions devised in order to rid the insurgents from the city. In addition to wide-scale
bombings, house-to-house searching took place aimed at uncovering arms caches. This
particular procedure is documented in two important photographs that portray,
respectively, the kicking open of a house in Jabera, neighbourhood in the south-eastern

                                                                                                               
123
Stallabrass, J., Interview with Ashley Gilbertson from: Stallabrass, J., Memory of Fire:
Images of War and the War of Images (2008) Brighton: Photoworks, p. 104.
124
Ibid, p. 105.
125
Gilbertson, A., Whiskey, Tango, Foxton (2007) Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, p. 241.
126
Lyman, R., Filkins, D., Aided By Iraqis U.S. Seizes Part of Rebel Town (Oct 2, 2004) The
New York Times, p. A1, A6, consulted at the New York Public Library, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers: The New York Times (1851 – 2009).

  36  
  

edge of the city,127 matched with the disruption of a wedding-party in the house of
some civilians unaware of the military operations.128
One of the captions quotes an American soldier who argued: “unimpeded access
throughout the city for Iraqi security forces and multinational forces is non-
negotiable”. Such a remark further highlights the brutality of civilian abuse already
exposed by the photographs. The second caption explains the decision by U.S. soldiers
to interrupt the party and force the guests to return home. The celebratory nature of the
event adds indignity to the brutal military actions.
The second article,129 featured on the NYT front page on October 4th, 2004,
outlines the success in the retaking of Samarra but does not fail to challenge the final
outcome. In particular the article reports the opinion of the Association of Muslim
Scholars accusing U.S. troops of having committed atrocities during the fight, also
accentuated by an unconfirmed source declaring hospitals to be “full of bodies” and
civilian children “buried in the gardens,” which as a result increased the anger of Iraqi
people towards the fight. The first130 out of two131 front-page photographs features an
explosion on the street with military personnel nearby, which provides another visual
proof of the violent military strategy adopted.
Following the recapture of Samarra, the press gained awareness of a new major
offensive to recapture Fallujah, which had since been occupied by fundamentalists and
anti-governmental insurgents. The battle known as Operation Phantom Fury officially
began on November 8th, 2004. The seven days of intense combat is thought to be the
most significant throughout the nine years of occupation. This offensive resulted in the
death of nearly 100 U.S. marines and at least 1,250 insurgents.132 Most of the mosques
throughout the city were destroyed by U.S. troops, presumed to be strongholds for the
insurgents. With seven reporters133 including Gilbertson recording the event the battle
received considerable media attention, occupying all NYT front-page articles between
                                                                                                               
127
Illustration 29.
128
Illustration 30.
129
Lyman, R., Filkins, D., After 3-Day Fight, U.S. and Iraqi Forces Retake Samarra (Oct 4,
2004) The New York Times, p. A1, A10, consulted at the New York Public Library, ProQuest
Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851 – 2009).
130
Illustration 31.
131
Illustration 32.
132
The People History, What Happened on November 8th, available from:
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/november8th.html.
133
Dexter Filkins and Robert Worth reported from Fallujah alongside Gilbertson, Edward
Wong and James Glanz from Baghdad and Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker from Washington.

  37  
  

November 10th and November 14th. All articles feature Gilbertson’s photographs on
the front page including the pages where the text continues. Above all, three articles
reveal important details that outline key features of Gilbertson’s reporting.
The first article, dated November 10th,134 with text by Filkins, recounts the
initial sixteen hours of fighting outlining the intensity and unpredictability of the
frontline where “nothing makes sense.”135 This is exemplified by two images of
battlefield action: a night shot of marines at the late stage of a battle,136 along with
other marines secured in a cultural centre ready to take action against insurgents.137 A
third photograph, published alongside an article by Wong and Schmitt is published on
page 13,138 which depicts the body of a dead insurgent in the middle of the street.139
These three images are so graphic that any other considerations beyond the brutal
reality they expose seem useless.
Another front-page article by Filkins dated November 11th,140 features two of
Gilbertson photographs.141 The first portrays marines by a mosque running on what the
writer defines as a “hellish warren of rubble-strewn streets.” The second depicts smoke
rising from a minaret hit by a bomb in an airstrike. Similar to the photograph featuring
the explosion in Samarra, these two images deliberately include both the surrounding
disaster and the presence of the military. This compositional strategy seizes upon a
narrative that has the force of recognisability. It reinforces the logical pattern of cause–
effect where the surrounding battlefield is the effect and the U.S. military is,
inevitably, the cause. Gilbertson’s critical approach does not limit the viewer to read
the cause–effect logic pattern only limited to the scene described, where the effect is
purely the material damage described in the single image (explosion, bombardment).

                                                                                                               
134
Filkins, D., In Taking Falluja Mosque, Victory by the Inch (Nov 10, 2004) The New York
Times, p. A1, A13, consulted at the New York Public Library, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers: The New York Times (1851 – 2009).
135
Ibid, p. A1.
136
Illustration 33.
137
Illustration 34.
138
Wong, E., Schmitt, E., Rebel Fighters Who Fled Attack May Now Be Active Elsewhere
(Nov 10, 2004) The New York Times, p. A1, A13, consulted at the New York Public Library,
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851 – 2009)
139
This image is intentionally not reproduced.
140
Filkins, D., Hard Lesson: 150 Marines Face 1 Spinner (Nov 11, 2004) The New York
Times, p. A1, A16, consulted at the New York Public Library, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers: The New York Times (1851 – 2009)
141
Illustrations 35, 36.

  38  
  

Rather the consistency in this compositional strategy arguably invites the viewer to
identify the U.S. army as the cause of the entire new disastrous situation in Iraq.
Finally, the last front-page article covering the battle, once again with text
written by Filkins,142 accompanies yet another photograph showing more brutality
towards civilians.143 A man covered in blood carrying a white flag is pleading with
marines for help as they aim their weapons at him. The white flag is a particularly
interesting detail as throughout Iraq during occupation white flags were used as a
noncombat sign, with most civilians carrying them.144 Yet, the flag did not stop the
soldiers in the photograph aiming their weapon at the wounded man.
In reporting not only brutal action scenes on the battlefield, but also
controversial military conduct towards civilians, Gilbertson shows the deformity of life
in Iraq, not just between fighters but also its reverberations on the citizens. It strongly
condemns the military behaviour of the U.S. troops as well as the negative effects of
their involvement in Iraq. And finally it prompts us to question our own position in the
Western world. With an aesthetic that favours the spontaneous and embodies
photographic competence and visual quality, it makes the depictions more vivid for an
American audience who cannot witness them at first hand. All such elements
insolently criticize the American military engagement, doing so in the newspaper that
in February 2003 considered the necessity of the Iraq War “Irrefutable and
Undeniable.”145

                                                                                                               
142
Filkins, D., Disguised in Iraqi Uniforms, Rebels Kill a Marine (Nov 13, 2004) The New
York Times, p. A1, A9, consulted at the New York Public Library, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers: The New York Times (1851 – 2009).
143
Illustration 37.
144
Gilbertson, A., Whiskey, Tango, Foxton (2007) Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, p. 163.
145
Safire, W., Irrefutable and Undeniable (Feb 6, 2003) The New York Times, available from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-undeniable.html.

  39  
  

The Urgent Image

The new state of collapse into which Iraq descended after the 2003 U.S.-led
invasion was further accentuated after the negotiations over the new Iraqi government
elections in December 2005, which became a harbinger of “the most violent Iraq since
the days of Saddam Hussein.”146 In the fourth year of America’s military presence
insurgencies grew stronger than ever with more violence resulting in conflicts between
Sunnis and Shiite militia, Christians and U.S. troops. February 2006 marked the
unofficial beginning of the civil war when Sunni insurgents destroyed the al-Askariya
shrine,147 a holy Shiite mosque in Samarra.148 During much of 2006, 3,000 Iraqis a
month were dying as the violence spread out of control.149
Facing this situation, significantly more violent and volatile than before, along
with the failure of the American-backed strategy to instil democracy, some public
opinion responded by publicly attacking the Iraqi people themselves. Many viewed the
Iraqis as ungrateful, failing to recognize the benefits that the U.S.-led occupation had
brought them.150 Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic magazine,
argued:

It seems increasingly clear to me that the blame for the violence in Iraq
(…) belongs to the Iraqis. For three years, the Iraqi have been a free
people. What have they done with their freedom? After we invaded Iraq,
Iraq invaded itself.151

This position arguably attempted not only to absolve the U.S. of its
responsibilities over the Iraq failure, but to a certain extent reinforced the inability of
the global audience to relate to this new Iraqi situation, especially with the violent war
portraits media shaped day after day in those years.

                                                                                                               
146
O’Sullivan, M., After Iraq’s election, the real fight (Mar 7, 2010) The Washington Post,
available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030501556.html.
147
Sambanis, N., It’s Official, There Is Now a Civil War in Iraq (Jan 23, 2006) The New York
Times, available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/opinion/23sambanis.html?_r=0.
148
Wong, E., Askariya Shrine (Jun 13, 2007) The New York Times, available from:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/alaskari_shrine/index.html.
149
Voice of America, Surging Violence, Sectarian Fears Haunt Iraq (May 30, 2013) available
from: http://m.voanews.com/a/1671850.html.
150
Heilbrunn, J., They Knew They Were Right (2009) New York: Anchor Books p. 270.
151
Wieseltier, L., Try Anything (Nov 27, 2006) The New Republic.

  40  
  

With a different approach, through use of the new technological and cultural
possibilities offered, with an unusual channel of distribution, Dutch photojournalist
and member of Magnum Photos Geert van Kesteren provided a completely different
take on the situation in Iraq with his publication Baghdad Calling (2008).152
Van Kesteren reported in Iraq between 2003 and 2004, soon after the American
invasion brought down the Hussein’s regime. He was embedded with the U.S. Army
for six weeks reporting for Newsweek and the German magazine Stern. He spent an
additional five months as an independent photojournalist during which little of his
work was published.153
With the situation in Iraq becoming more dangerous, complicated by the incident
on the bridge in Fallujah in March 2004,154 Van Kesteren decided to invest in his first
publication Why Mister Why? (2004) with the work he has built in the first years,
which has also recently been released as an Apple application. Subsequently, with the
increasing danger accentuated in the battles in Fallujah, Ramadi and Baghdad, as well
as facing the growing limitations imposed on journalists, van Kesteren decided to
document another reality of war: the situation of the almost 4 millions Iraqis forced to
leave their homes either to be displaced in the country or to seek asylum in
neighbouring Middle Eastern countries in an attempt to flee the brutal violence taking
place at home.155
Speaking with almost eighty families of different ethnicities, van Kesteren
recalls the terrible stories of murder, kidnap, violence, torture and beheading during
which Iraq was being “ghettoised and ethnically cleansed.”156 This forced most
refugees to flee, unable to return to the places where they used to live. As van Kesteren

                                                                                                               
152
Van Kesteren, G., Baghdad Calling; Reports from Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Iraq (2008)
Rotterdam: Episode Publishers.
153
Lardinios, B., Interview with Geert van Kesteren from: Stallabrass, J., Memory of Fire:
Images of War and the War of Images (2008) Brighton: Photoworks, p. 163-167.
154
On April 4th, 2004 U.S. media reported of four U.S. contractors were killed, drugged
through the streets and hung from the Fallujah bridge as anti-American manifestation. From:
Freeman, C., Horror at Fallujah / Savage Attacks (Apr 1, 2004) San Francisco Chronicle,
available from: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Horror-at-Fallujah-SAVAGE-ATTACK-
Bodies-2772639.php.
155
UNHCR, Statistics on Displaced Iraqi around the World (Apr 2007) available from:
http://www.unhcr.org/461f7cb92.html.
156
Lardinios, B., Interview with Geert van Kesteren from: Stallabrass, J., Memory of Fire:
Images of War and the War of Images (2008) Brighton: Photoworks, p. 169.

  41  
  

familiarized himself with the stories his frustration increased since the photographs he
could take in the refugee camps were rather mundane.157
The idea for van Kesteren’s next publication materialized during a meeting with
a group of doctors in Oman, who, while explaining the tragic death of their friend and
colleague, revealed a mobile photograph taken during his last hours in a Baghdad
hospital. Van Kesteren then realized that not only did that image perfectly reflect the
story he encountered, but also that documenting such moments through mobile phones
was a habit of many Iraqi civilians. Mobile phone photographs were frequently sent to
the refugees updating them on family matters, showing what their old neighbourhood
looked like, sharing brutal war scenes in most places where even journalists dare not
cover, or even just reassuring those who remained home that they were okay.158
Van Kesteren spent months amassing hundreds of such photos from the mobile
phones and digital cameras of Iraqi citizens and later published them in an innovative
photo-book Baghdad Calling. The publication also includes van Kesteren’s own
photographs exposing the impoverished conditions of the Iraqi refugees who live in
the camps in Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Thirteen brief stories that describe the
decisions behind the reasons for fleeing or the myriad of misadventures happened at
home also appear in text.
The book is in fact structured in two parts: the mobile phone photos from
Baghdad between 2005 and 2007 through the eyes of Iraqis themselves are run as large
double-page spreads on journal paper, mostly un-captioned and following no particular
sequence of chronological order. Throughout the book the efficient and brief visual
essays from van Kesteren accompany the articles that feature the thirteen stories that
interrupt the spreads. These photo-essays and articles are printed on pages with a richer
paper and a shorter width to emphasize their different content.
The long series of mobile photos by different citizens illustrate a vivid chronicle
of everyday life in Iraq for those who had not been displaced or forced to leave. This
sequence of images includes various different subjects. The opening images feature
smoke from a daytime grenade raid within an urban context.159 Most of these
photographs are shot from inside a car, as some side mirrors exemplify. Such elements

                                                                                                               
157
Ibid.
158
Ibid, p. 170.
159
Illustrations 38, 39, 40, 41.

  42  
  

amplify the sense of unease while reinforcing the first-person point of view from
which they are shot.
The series continues with other elements of urban decay such as abandoned and
exploded cars,160 often featured in media as vehicles on fire, here presented as the
aftermath of explosions with destroyed bodywork collapsed on the floor. Suddenly the
subjects of the mobile photos switch to more mundane shots; a domestic portrait of a
girl with the caption: “My friend and Bobby the dog at home”161 reveals another
reason behind taking pictures – proof some people at home are okay. A Muslim family
celebrating Christmas at their home with Santa hats documents the changing religious
and ethnic perspective of Iraq.162
Snaps of typical dinners in the houses of those who have not left,163 or interior
shots of Iraqi houses,164 are juxtaposed with piles of demolished infrastructures
captioned with text revealing what they used to be – rich areas of Baghdad where the
situation now appears one of total disaster.165 More sinister images of dead bodies left
on the streets in daylight166 precede other interior shots that this time expose the
damage from severe explosions within domestic spaces, depicting people seemingly
unsure of what to do.167
The irregular sequence of mundane shots juxtaposed with others describing the
worse stage of war continues throughout the book. Two friends on a “Trip to Suli” in
Kurdistan,168 precede photographs of a bomb in Al-Muadam with violent images of
civil Iraqis bleeding and widespread confusion on the streets of the city.169 Or again,
images of a deteriorated Al-Kam Street that the caption reminds having been
“beautiful. Full with people,”170 now presented as a pile of garbage and half-empty
retailers in a grubby urban corner, precede Iraqi guys dancing in Gamesland.171 A
wedding with “Muslim and Christian people (…) scared but happy at the same

                                                                                                               
160
Illustration 40.
161
Illustration 42.
162
Illustration 43.
163
Illustration 44.
164
Illustration 45.
165
Illustration 46.
166
This images were intentionally not reproduced.
167
Illustration 47.
168
Illustration 48.
169
Illustration 49.
170
Illustration 50.
171
Illustration 51.

  43  
  

time”172 follows a collapsed bridge that now divides the land forcing people to use a
boat.173
The continuous juxtaposition of ordinary shots with several extreme portraits of
the conflict reinforce the physical and psychological omnipresence of war – so
intrinsic in everyday life that even the distinction and selection of subjects collapse;
banal domestic snaps are equally relevant vehicles to record it as disastrous urban
scenarios.
The images, often uncaptioned, do not aim to represent war in any way other
than by showing it: literally, directly. The reality they expose is sometimes so extreme
that they do not aim to describe it or romanticize it; the mere direct visual proof
suffices. The poor quality of the mobile photographs, often pixelated, at times so much
as to obscure the content, strengthen their perspective: undetached, ad hoc – the
photographs are first-person records of everyday life, not documentations of
professional photojournalists. By printing the mobile phone images on journal paper
comparisons are drawn with newspaper features accentuating the immediacy and
urgency of the new Iraq situation exposed, also heightened by the solid red cover,174
straightforward design and allusive title of the book.
To interrupt the large number of these spreads, van Kesteren’s photo-essays and
the thirteen written articles are placed in a non-sequenced frequency. They speak of the
stories, all different from one another, of the tragic circumstances that led these
individuals to flee their country and ask asylum for the widespread violence taking
place at home.
A brief episode described in a concise 4-day account reports of Manaf, a 20
years old student kidnapped outside Mustansiriya University, and murdered the day
after upon the implications of betrayal of Sunni people with the Shiia militia.175
Another account from Abdi, an Iraqi businessman forced to leave after witnessing a
U.S. soldier accidently killing his business partner, accuses the Americans of having
destroyed their country for their interest in oil.176 A report from Damascus, exposes the
story of Mr. Gorail, a Christian forced to live in Al-Mecanic City after risking his life

                                                                                                               
172
Illustration 52.
173
Illustration 53.
174
Illustration 54.
175
Van Kesteren, G., Baghdad Calling; Reports from Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Iraq (2008)
Rotterdam: Episode Publishers, p. 81, 84.
176
Ibid, p. 141, 144.

  44  
  

three times. During the Hussein regime Christian and Sunni people lived in peace,
today in the same area murder is “an everyday occurrence.”177 Another story reports
the tragic situation of Nassem Jalal, a 14 years old boy with six siblings looked after
by their grandmother after both Christian parents were kidnapped and killed by the
Sunni militia in Samarra.178 Jassim, a young Shiite from Kufa, recalls not being able to
go to school in Najaf as terrorists had gained control of their old neighbourhood and
would rape the girls.179
The concise, brief texts draw attention to the stories, often hidden in traditional
media. The mostly first-person narrative underlines, once again, the immediacy and
urgency of the situations of the raconteurs. As with the mobile-phone photos, a direct,
first-person, literal description of key facts or episodes suffices and to a certain extent
reinforces the urgency.
These testimonies also provide effective methods to comprehend the at-hand
implications of the population of the new Iraqi situation, as opposed to amplifying the
readers’ understanding of the ethnic, political and religious reasons behind the internal
tensions. The brutal accounts of kidnap, violence and murder from Sunni and Shiia
militias are aimed at exposing the repercussions for people as opposed to revealing the
reasons that motivate such actions. This detachment from any particular political or
religion convictions that filter other accounts of the war makes the stories more
tangible and accessible.
The testimonies mainly exposed through first-person narrations, along with the
mobile-phone photos, share the common individual perspective of the facts from the
civilian point of view, helping the readers to relate on a human scale.
The photo-book form suits the radical use of images and text van Kesteren made,
arguably unviable in traditional magazines that prefer conventional reporting to
citizens’ perspectives. On the other hand, van Kestern’s photo-essays, either direct
portraits of the narrators or more general portraits of the life in the refugee camps, add
a journalistic quality to this collection of citizen raconteurs, while exposing the
impoverished conditions in which the narrators find themselves now.

                                                                                                               
177
Ibid, p. 213, 216.
178
Ibid, p. 233, 236.
179
Ibid, p. 325, 332.

  45  
  

This overall combination results in a new journalistic narrative that provides an

insightful understanding of the horrors that the Iraqi have and continued to experience
every day, and brings to light the urgent situations in which the citizens find
themselves since the 2003 invasion. Breaking the boundaries of conventional
photojournalism, while taking advantage of the new technological possibilities offered
by media for war reportage, and using an unconventional channel of distribution, van
Kesteren invented a completely new way of investigating war, while calling for
attention, and action to ensure Iraqis a better future.

  46  
  

Conclusion – The Emancipated Spectator

In Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) Susan Sontag dismisses the

contemporary left-oriented discourse on images informed by Guy Debord, especially
when dealing with representations of war, as patronizing.180 Specifically reflecting
upon André Glucksmann’s diagnosis that the Bosnian War would have not be won or
lost by anything that was happening on the ground, but rather by what was happening
in the media, Sontag refers to him as one of the “day-trippers to Sarajevo,”181 where
Sontag spent almost three years of her life during the siege investigating the horrors of
the war. Sontag continues:

To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking

provincialism. It universalizes the viewing habit of a small, educated
population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been
converted into entertainment (…) It assumes that everyone is a
spectator. It suggests, perversely, unseriously, that there is no real
suffering in the world.182

Her analysis points out the absurdity of universalizing the audience’s response to
events exposed in media, as part of the critique of the spectacle. She underlines the
paradox of doing so from the cynical, superior position of one who “knows nothing at
first hand about war” and has the “dubious privilege of being spectators”183 denying
not just the suffering of those who directly experience the horrors of the war, but also
the response of those who react with concern to what they are shown.
Sontag’s critique, dated 2003, could not include Kellner or Giroux’s verdicts on
the September 11th and the “War on Terror,” but arguably their critical position fits
very well with this type of “fancy rhetoric”184 Sontag condemns. Her assertion is itself
a revision of her own previous critique theorized in her renowned masterpiece of
cultural criticism On Photography (1977) where, following the neoliberal turn, her
assertion that images are analgesics that render the audience tourists of reality has been
part of one of the most credited discussions from media theorists for decades.185

                                                                                                               
180
Sontag, S., Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) London: Penguin Books.
181
Ibid, p. 98.
182
Ibid, p. 98-99.
183
Ibid, p. 99.
184
Ibid, p. 97.
185
Sontag, S., On Photography (1977) New York, NY: Picador.

  47  
  

Theorized over forty years ago and reawakened in the aftermath of the
September 11th attacks, the seductive discourse that renders reality a mere illusion
through its mediation in news images is obsolete for the contemporary media debate,
or, as in the case of Sontag’s revision, even for the critique of the critique.
While with the advent of neoliberalism it is not possible to remove the media
from its material relation with power,186 it would be pessimistic and unproductive to
frame media exclusively as forces of domination that frighten the audience into
subjection – be it through the hands of the consumer state or the terrorist group. In the
face of the more complex global media landscape, with the new possibilities offered, it
is absurd to universalize the implicit impossibility of a democratic and educational use
of media as much as it is absurd to generalize their effect on the spectators.
The pessimism and unproductiveness of this discourse, as well as its
obsolescence, are brilliantly exemplified in Jacques Rancière’s The Emancipated
Spectator (2009). Rancière observes that whereas forty years ago the critique of the
spectacle was supposed to unveil the perverse logic of social control to provide a
means to react to it, nowadays it has become just a disenchanted knowledge.187
Whereas it was meant to create forms of consciousness towards the spectator’s
emancipation, today it is disconnected from this horizon, implying that there is no
alternative to this social domination.
Therefore, this critique, which was “ultimately identified with the war on
terror,”188 aims to continue the revelation of the devastating effects of images on our
critical understanding, the only difference being that it does not any longer provide a
means to react to it, like a “melancholy [that] feeds its own impotence.”189 Although it
might still be critical in intent, this perspective is perfectly in tune with the functioning
of the system it denounces.

                                                                                                               
186
This assertion is explored in far too many books to mention. Noam Chomsky provides a
detailed analysis in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988).
Here he argues that the editorial distortion of the U.S. mass media depends from their
dependence upon corporate and governmental sources. If a medium incurs in governmental
disfavour, it is excluded from access to information, losing readers/viewers, and consequently
advertisers. To diminish such risk, news media favour government and corporate policies,
often distorting their editorial reporting, hurting democracy. From: Chomsky, N.,
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) New York:
Phanteon Books.
187
Rancière, J., The Emancipated Spectator (2009) London: Verso.
188
Ibid, p. 40.
189
Ibid, p. 35

  48  
  

As a result, “this disconnection between critical procedures and their purpose

strips them of any hope of effectiveness”190 and “reveals the disjunction at the heart of
the critical paradigm. It can mock its illusions, but it reproduces its logic.”191
Rancière concludes calling for a change in our approach to critical thought,
confident that “there is more to be sought and found” then the “endless demonstration
of the omnipresence of the beast.”192 Yet, in order to change our approach we must
first of all “challenge these identifications of the image with idolatry, ignorance and
passivity” so that we can finally “take a fresh look at what images are, what they do
and the effects they generate.” 193
Whereas Kellner and Giroux criticized media, passively acknowledging the
dominating power of the system, Meyerowitz, Gilbertson, and van Kesteren have
rather used media, in order to emancipate from the system.
With a reflective, insolent, or urgent image; inviting to reflect, to refuse, or to
take action; through an ideological stance, a critical approach, or a radical action; on
the pages of a cultural critique magazine, a mass-circulation newspaper, or a photo-
book; all engaged with the new possibilities of media as democratic educational tools.
Revealing the new social and political potential of media for critique and
positive intervention, Meyerowitz, Gilbertson and van Kesteren offered the chance to
refuse the position of the passive spectator, ultimately helping to defeat the
omnipresent power of the spectacle, which had only been affirmed by the theorists
who aimed to unmask its perverse functioning.

                                                                                                               
190
Ibid, p. 40.
191
Ibid, p. 45.
192
Ibid, p. 49.
193
Ibid, p. 95.

  49  
  

List of Illustrations

Illustrations 1, 2

Debord, G., Society of the Spectacle (1983) Detroit: Black & Red, cover, and, Garber, M.,
Marlock, J. and L. Walkowitz, R., Media Spectacles (1993) New York & London:
Routledge, cover.

  50  
  

Illustrations 3, 4

General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon. Photo: Eddie
Adams / Associated Press

Kim Phuc, centre, runs down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam, after an aerial napalm
attack. Photo: Huynh Cong “Nick” Ut / Associated Press

  51  
  

Illustrations 5, 6

Operation Desert Storm: RAF smart bomb strikes. Photo: U.S. Department of Defence

Illustration 7

U.S. Air Force F-15Es, F-16S and F15C flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells. Photo: U.S.
Department of Defence

  52  
  

Illustration 12, 13

The second hijacked plane is seen moments before striking the second tower of the World
Trade Center. Photo: Masatomo Kuriya / Corbis

The south tower of the World Trade Center begins to collapse after a terrorist attack on the
building. Photo: Gulnara Samoliova / Associated Press

  53  
  

Illustration 15

Smoke covers Saddam Hussein's presidential palace compound during a massive U.S.-led
air raid on Baghdad, Iraq on March 21th, 2003. Photo: Ramzi Haidar / Getty Images

Illustration 16

A U.S. soldier watches a Saddam Hussein statue topping in Baghdad on April 9th, 2003.
Photo: Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

  54  
  

Illustration 17

"Mission Accomplished"; President Bush, after declaring the end of major combat in Iraq,
spoke on May 1st, 2003, aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln off the California coast.
Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

Illustration 18

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein after being captured in a dirt hole under a
farmhouse near Tikrit. Photo: Associated Press

  55  
  

Illustrations 19, 20

(Photos: Joel Meyerowitz. Captions as in original article.)

Panoramic view, looking northeast from the World Financial Center, across West Street to
the World Trade Center site, September 25, 2001.

The stump of a tree destroyed on the day of the attacks, on the walk leading to the World
Trade Center plaza, October 11, 2001.

  56  
  

Illustrations 21, 22

The eastern view from the base of the north-tower pile. September 23, 2001.

Looking southeast from West Street: ironworkers at the site. September 23, 2001. Run as
third spread.

  57  
  

Illustrations 23, 24

Looking northeast from Liberty Street to the surrounding walk of the South Tower,
October 15, 2011.

Finding more bodies in the South Tower pile, October 26, 2001.

  58  
  

Illustrations 25, 26, 27

A day-care center across the street from the North Tower, November 15 2001. Run as
sixth spread.

A mechanic working near Dey Street, at the east wall of the site, March 2, 2002.
A column from the south tower, which will be the last piece of the building to be removed
from the site, March 30, 2002.

  59  
  

Illustrations 28

The view looking northeast from the World Financial Center, as the cleanup neared
completion. May 1, 2002.

  60  
  

Illustrations 29, 30

(Photos: Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times. Captions as in original articles.)

A statement released by the American military said that "unimpeded access throughout the
city for Iraqi security forces and multinational forces is non-negotiable."

As U.S. soldier entered a house that was hosting a wedding party, the head of the
household pleaded with them to let his guests return home, saying there was not enough
room for them to stay for the next two or three nights as the soldiers requested.

  61  
  

Illustrations 31, 32

American soldiers conducted searches on Sunday in Samarra, where allied forces drove
out insurgents who had occupied the city.

Army Sgt. Bill Willett sorted through items belonging to a former Baath Party figure in
Samarra on Sunday, including a portrait of Saddam Hussein.

  62  
  

Illustrations 33, 34

Marines tried to take cover after a phosphorus round, set off to help provide cover for
tanks, rained down on the unit. No one was seriously hurt.

After engaging in fierce house-to-house fighting, marines with the First Battalion, Eighth
Marines, moved in yesterday to secure an Islamic cultural center in Falluja, taking aim at
insurgents in nearby buildings.

  63  
  

Illustrations 35, 36

Marines from Company B, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine
Expeditionary Force entered a mosque from which they were being fired on Wednesday in
Falluja. Fighting in the city was intense.

Smoke rose from a minaret that was hit by a 500-pound bomb in an airstrike Wednesday.

  64  
  

Illustration 37

An Iraqi with a white flag pleaded with marines in Falluja for help for wounded family
members. He had been seriously wounded himself.

  65  
  

Illustrations 38, 39

(Captions as in original, if any.)

  66  
  

Illustrations 40, 41

I was in my college talking to my friend’s father who wanted us to convince this friend to
return to Iraq to continue his studies and as we were talking this big explosion took place.

  67  
  

Illustrations 42, 43

My friend and Bobby the dog

I like it. They are a Musilm family celebrating Christmas at their home.

  68  
  

Illustrations 44, 45

It’s here in Iraq. I live in Iraq so there is a life inspite of all the bombs. We still wanna
reach the highest level in our dreamz… I sent these pix 2 my cousin. She wanted 2 c our
home. She’s not in Iraq. She cried when she saw I, u know memories.

  69  
  

Illustrations 46, 47

Images from Al-Jamaa in Baghdad

  70  
  

Illustrations 48, 49

Suli, Kurdistan

  71  
  

Illustrations 50, 51

Al-Kam Street was beautiful, full with people. Look what it is like now.

Iraqi guys dancing in Gamesland.

  72  
  

Illustrations 52, 53

This is wedding in 2006, they are Muslims and Christian people. They were so scared but
happy at the same time.

  73  
  

Illustration 54

Van Kesteren, G., Baghdad Calling; Reports from Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Iraq (2008)
Rotterdam: Episode Publishers, cover.

  74  
  

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  83  
  

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  84  
  

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all my colleagues and tutors at the M.A. Photojournalism at
University of Westminster for making the past two years a meaningful personal and
academic experience. Now that this journey is coming to end I could not be happier for
the choice I made to join this programme and for doing so while working, as suggested
by my tutor Ben Edwards. To him my gratitude goes for both accepting me on the
course and for his commitment to the part-time students. I am truly thankful to my
tutors Max Houghton and David Campany for their valuable teaching in writing and
theory, which encouraged me to work in previously unfamiliar territory, now my
proudest achievement. I would like to thank Lívia Bonadio for sharing her research
and knowledge, for inspiring me to work on a written dissertation as opposed to a
photographic project, and for her constant email correspondence over the past three
months. Thanks to Chiara Tomasoni for her positive tips. Thanks to Elizabeth
Rutigliano and all the librarians at the New York Public Library for their research
suggestions. Thanks to Camilla Dubini for pushing me to reshape the structure of this
written piece in the best of my possibilities, and to Roberta Klimt for the proof
reading. I would like also to thank my family, friends and colleagues at Alla Carta that
I could not possibly mention. This dissertation is dedicated to Alexander Whitehead
for his invaluable support.

  85