London College of Communication

Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Master

2013-2014 / First Year

The path of an iconic photo:

Association of Muslim suffering and Christian Iconography
The case of three World Press Photo of the Year winners

Stephanie Ravel
Kingdom of Bahrain
July 2013

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KOSOVO 1990
Georges Mérillon, Gamma agency
Nagavc-Kosovo, 29-01-1990.
The wake of Nasimi Elshani, 28, killed
during demonstrations for the
independence of Kosovo. This resulted in
1998 in an increased presence of Serb
paramilitaries and regular forces who
subsequently began pursuing a campaign
of retribution against Kosovo Albanians.
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovo
Albanians killed.
World Press Photo of the Year 1991

ALGERIA 1997
Hocine Zaourar, AFP agency
Bentalha, Algeria, 23-09-1997.
Massacre of 200 civilians by the G.I.A
(armed islamist group).
At the hospital Um Saad’s brother, sister
in law and nephew are on the victims list.
In 1991 the Algerian Army suspends the
election process following a decade long
civil war. From 1991 to 1997 there are
anestimated 150,000 to 200,000 victims.
World Press Photo of the Year 1997

YEMEN 2011
Samuel Aranda, AFP agency, on
assignment for New-York Times
Sanaa, Yemen, 15-10-2011.
Fatima Al Qaws hold her wounded son
during protests against president Saleh.
They are in a mosque turned field
hospital. The Yemeni Revolution followed
the initial stages of other mass protests
in the Middle East in early 2011 called
the ‘Arab spring’.
World Press Photo of the Year 2011

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 CONTENTS

Presentation of the three photographs studied 2

Introduction 4

Part I: Representation (photographer’s interpretation) 6

Part II: From aesthetic representation to political economy of 10

representation (media interpretation)

Conclusion: From politics of representation to the victim’s re- 17

appropriation

Appendix 18

References 27

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 ‘Manipulation is the fate of all pictures for better or worse’

Georges Didi-Huberman

INTRODUCTION

If photojournalism raises ethical and aesthetical issues, it is mainly because it feeds a media
system which has the power to create new truths.

So what does it mean when three different photographs by three different photographers in
three distinctive contexts are being used, celebrated, awarded or criticized in the same way by a
community of professionals?

This study focus on images illustrating three distinct political conflicts: Kosovo, Algeria and
Yemen. However, the common characteristics shared by the photographs create a narrow
pattern of representations that we will try to bring to light.

The first commonality is the narration chosen by the three photojournalists: Muslim women in
an intimate moment of intense suffering. Another similarity is their Christian allusions: labeled
‘Madonnas’ or ‘Pietas’ during the publishing process, they achieved an iconic status. Also, the
three pictures received the Picture of the Year’s World Press Photo award. In addition, they
provoked fierce debate on how accurate the association of Christian references to a Muslim
context could be. The voices for and against this association often frame it under the same
terms: whether or not western media is colonize the Muslim world. But whatever the answer, it
confines the potential of the photographs in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, with no anthropological
perspective to overcome the cultural separation.

The first part of the study therefore compares the three photographs before they entered the
editorial system and were deliberately associated with Christian imagery. The aim is to underline
the genuine realms that the photographs address. Accordingly, the first part also points at the
characteristics which excite the appetite of the media for this kind of image and turn them into
an iconic media object.

The second part presents the media economy’s interpretation. The analysis intends to show
what kind of modifications the three photographs went through and their repercussions. This
part focuses especially on the disconnect between the religious signification of the Pieta and the
character of Mary (accepted suffering) and the reality of political tragedies. Finally the second
part addresses also the World Press Photo award, the final step to declare the photographs
iconic.

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The last stage of the path to those three iconic photographs was to approach audiences’
interpretation of it. This was done by means of an online survey. Seventy-six Middle Eastern and
Western viewers were separately surveyed about the thoughts and emotions provoked by
Aranda’s photograph of the Yemen uprising in 2011.

In conclusion is a brief presentation of how the three photographed persons interpreted and re-
appropriated their own image. It is important to show that the debate on the association of
Christian Iconography ‘is not only a western concern’ as David Campbell states 1. Knowing what
the people concerned (the subjects of the photographs; the Muslim world) make of it is
essential.

1
Available at: http://www.david-campbell.org/2010/11/04/sem-presser-lecture-2005/

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 I. Representation: the photographer’s interpretation

Beyond the evident aesthetic elegance, the condition for the three images to become
emblematic is belonging to an archetype which establishes the human order. Therefore, after
establishing the role of the photographer, the effects of the photographs’ choice to address
death and mother-child relationship will be highlighted.

1. Beyond Aestheticization

The production, circulation and reception of photographs contribute equally to the construction
of ‘the other’ and its stereotypes. To quote American anthropologist Edward Hall, the
photojournalist’s role is a ‘key first moment in a cultural circuit’ of representation of the
otherness (Hall, 1997 p.226). Indeed it is particularly the aesthetic choices of the
photojournalists which establish a first layer of visual grammar (the frontal angle, the close
framing, light…). The aesthetic appeal of the three photographs studied here is the first
condition of their media success and consequently their transformation to an iconic status. This
is also the reason why they have been so widely discussed and criticized by the profession itself
and the audience, often wrongly accused as staged, almost as if to say that the more aesthetical
qualities invested, the less authentic or truthful the image is. But this idea -according to
photography critic David Levi Strauss (2003) -needs ‘to be seriously questioned’ because for him
‘to represent is to aestheticize, that is to transform’.

In this first part on representation we will not address the association of the photographs with
Christian allegories. Doing so we wish to avoid missing the amplitude of the matter raised by
images of suffering of others (Reinhardt, 2007, p.28). And also because this ‘connotation’
represents a super-imposition given neither by the women represented nor the photographers
who hardly can explain the success of their photograph, but by the other participants of the
visual economy (western news agencies, magazines’ editors, and audience). Samuel Aranda -
about his photographs being called the ‘Yemeni Pieta’ - justifies that “it was not intentional… It
was really tense and chaotic, in these situations you just shoot” 2. Same explanation for Hocine
Zaourar about his picture called ‘the Algerian Madonna’: “When I take my picture, I do it
according to what I feel…But to say that this photo will make the front page, that’s not true”.

2
Online source: British Journal of Photography, 2012: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-
photography/news/2145521/world-press-photo-winning-image-reference-michelangelos-piet

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 2. The theme of lamentation

Although the three pictures represent different events, they are in agreement. The choice to
represent apolitical event through lamentation triggers a number of dichotomies:

 Information vs. Emotion

There is a contrast between the low news value and the high emotional dimension of the event.
Emotionality is recognized as the source of the ‘value’ of iconic images (Hariman and Lucaites,
2007). The intensification of the emotion is created by the choice of a frontal angle, close up
(Zaourar and Merillon) and dim light in the case of Merillon’s photo 3.

 Private vs. Public

Another dichotomy revealed is the transformation of a very private moment into a public one by
means of reproduction. Lamentation is traditionally depicted as the domain of families and
women. We can observe that the only male presence is a dead body or an injured one. The
prominence of the hands in the three photographs also indicates the change from private to
public. Hands gestures have a dual nature 4: a private one because they are the expression of
sorrow (Merillon’s picture), and a simultaneously public gesture to console and comfort because
mourning or bewailing is a collective act. The women’s hands embodiy exemplary “relationships
between civic actors”, which for Hariman and Lucaites (2007, p.11) is another “vector of the
rhetorical effectivety of the iconic image”.

 Political vs. ahistorical

The three photographs also document a shift from a concrete event to an atemporal scene by
the means of the exclusion of any contextual element. Art historian Georges Didi-Huberman-
who wrote extensively about Zaourar’s photograph - argues that funeral rites with women who
shout both their pain and rage are “remnants of a structure that is found in Greek tragedies” 5. It
is worth noting that ancient Egyptian art 6 also witnesses lamentation scene with the same
characteristics as these three contemporary photographs (feminine presence, raised arms as
expression of pain). The position of Georges Didi-Huberman is that “images involve a notion of
duration which goes beyond the time they document” 7. Indeed, Hariman and Lucaites (2007,
p.11) - who analyzed in detail iconic images - found that ‘the iconic photographs assume special
significance in respect to the past’.

3
See Appendix 1 p.18 : a photograph of the same shoot with flash
4
See Appendix 2 p.18 : a focus on hand gestures
5
‘La Madone de Bentalha’, 2004 (documentary). Pascal Convert (with English subtitles)
6
See Appendix 3 p.19
7
translated by the author of this essay, « Image, événement, durée », Images Re-vues [Online], hors-série
1 | 2008, http://imagesrevues.revues.org/787?lang=en

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  Absence vs. Presence

The angle of the lamentation involves two parameters which de-politicize the photograph. First,
the photographs show only the epilogue of the events. Second, we note the absence of the
culprit, two elements that Aristotle noted in the most effective tragedies (Hariman and Lucaites,
2007). In the three photographs the absence of weapons, blood, flags, tanks, or demonstrations
connects one more strongly to the family drama and emphasizes the sorrow of the living more
than the consequences of possible political involvement of any sort by the deceased. Thus,
paradoxically, the absence of the oppressor doesn’t make him less palpable. Even if at this stage
the full context is not given by the media editors, in Merillon’s and Aranda’s photographs the
body is the trace of the politic, the indirect presence of the aggressor. This concept of presence-
absence in a representation is not only characteristic of Christian icons and almost all
monotheist or polytheist religions, but ancient pagan civilizations which lead us again to the a-
temporality of the photographs.

Identifying with suffering and lamentation is not limited to one’s culture. As, Regis Debray (1992,
p.53) notes, “we are contemporary of all the images of the past”. The actors involved in
selecting, editing, publishing, awarding and commenting on the three photographs erred in
framing the universal nature of lamentation as an exclusively Muslim or Christian ritual.
According to Dr Spivey8, representations of the ritual of death have existed as far back as 9000
years ago in Jericho.

In summary, the photographers’ esthetic and ethical choices represent a first ‘imposition of
meaning’ or first ‘code’9 on the photographs. The three pictures share a common narrative of
tragedy, in addition to the dichotomy and interplay between absence and presence. This
interplay appears in the form of several dualities: information versus emotion, private versus
public, political versus atemporal. The narrow focus on emotions along with an undeniable
aesthetic eloquence results in paving the way for the media chain to impose a second layer of
meaning. Those arrangements will be fundamental in fixing the representation of the ‘Other’
towards a Western audience.

8
BBC documentary, presented by Dr Spivey, How Art made the world, the death and back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgAVfQyIO0Y
9
Roland Barthes terminology

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Merillon, Kosovo 1990 Annibale Carracci, Lamentation of christ, 1606

Zaourar, Algeria, 1997 Rogier van der Weyden, The Crucifixion, 1464

Aranda, Yemen, 2011 William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Pietà, 1876

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 II. From aesthetic representation to political economy of
representation: media economy interpretation

Christian Caujolle - creator of VU news agency - states that “we never see photos, what we see
is the usage of the photos”10. It is true that the genuine authors of the iconic photographs are
their editors. The initial beauty of the image will be celebrated, used, and manipulated. The
text/image duo imposes new meanings and creates a specific knowledge.

In this second part, the changes induced by the layout and the text associated to the
photographs will first be underlined. Next, the possible effects created by the association of
Christian iconography and Muslim context in particular will be examined. Finally, the discourse
on photojournalism will be exemplified as part of the media ‘apparatus’ through quotes by
World Press Photo Jury members and their detractors.

1. The choice of the photograph

On the 23/09/1997 the woman howling her sorrow was on the front page of 750 Western
newspapers11. Um Saad became the face of the Algerian political turmoil, (except in Algeria
where the photo had not been published). Even if Andre Gunthert states that “to select a
photograph for its expressive properties is not logical within a practice which claims the
neutrality of documenting”12, nevertheless the emotional intensity of the photographs is why
they have been chosen. The survey created for this essay shows that 77% of Western audiences
consider that Aranda’s photograph doesn’t give enough information to understand the
situation. In spite of the geographic proximity, nearly half of the Middle-Eastern audience panel
thinks the same (59%)13. When questioned about the kind of feeling provoked by this photo,
60% of the Western panel mentioned sadness. The complex political situations of Yugoslavia,
Algeria and Yemen at the time of the photographs were reduced to simply being ‘sad’.

The pictures’ editors chose those three images when the respective conflicts were already well
known by the audience. Merillon’s photograph, perhaps the most informative of the three, was
paradoxically not published by Time. In 1990, at the time of the event, the photograph wasn’t
been published much. Kosovo was not yet a regular news item. The photograph took on a real
informational value only nine years later in 1999, when the OTAN intervened in the Balkans.

10
Interview from: ‘La Madone de Bentalha’, 2004 (documentary). Pascal Convert
11
See Appendix 4 p.20 : front pages
12
Gunthert, A., 2013."Les icônes du photojournalisme, ou la narration visuelle inavouable", online
available at: http://culturevisuelle.org/icones/2609
13
See Appendix 10 p. 25: survey’s results Appendix p.

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Zaourar’s photograph, taken in 1997, was published after seven years of civil war had claimed
approximately 250,000 Algerian victims.

2. Text and Layout

Zaourar’s photograph’s fate is perhaps a symbol of the way the media system distorts reality.
Hocine Zaourar was first accused by his peers to have staged the scene. Then the Algerian
government tried him for destabilization of the state. Um Saad (the woman in the photographs),
sued him and the news Agency AFP for defamation and being called a ‘Madonna’. Constantly
criticized by media analysts, Hocine Zaourar became a victim of how the system he works for
used his image.

In Zaourar’s case, the first manipulation of the elements of the discourse came when the news
agency AFP cropped the photo which was then systematically published without mention of the
modification14. This framing greatly accentuated the de-contextualization of the image,
rendering the sorrow deeper and the only feeling available. As Georges Didi-Haberman
describes: “we lose the fact than when we are mourning, life continues stupidly around us, we
lose the dimension of the reality of the event. We also lose the whole masculine presence, the
Algerian referent, so as to create a sort of veiled woman’s timelessness” 15.

 The Text

The nature of the text accompanying the three photographs, also determines the imposition of
meaning. Zaourar’s picture was given a wrong caption by the AFP (Um Saad didn’t lose her 8
children but her brother and sister in law). Moreover, the titles accompanying the image were:
‘Horror without end’, ‘Algeria from massacre to massacre’, ‘What to do for Algeria’, and ‘A
Madonna in hell’. Aranda’s photo has been associated to titles like: ‘Islamic Pieta’, ‘Pieta with
niqab’16. In this case the linguistic message doesn’t provide the consumer with an identification
but gives an interpretation. As Roland Barthes (2003, p 118) explains, “it remote-controls the
reader toward meaning chosen in advance”. For instance, Merillon’s photo caption ‘funeral in
Kosovo’ became ‘Pieta of the Kosovo’ after publication and after the W.P.P. award.

14
See Appendix 5 p.20: original contact sheet
15
interview from: ‘La Madone de Bentalha’, 2004 (documentary). Pascal Convert
16
See Appendix 6 p.21

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 3. Association with Christian Iconography

Photo-Text and Secular-Sacred are two inseparable interlinked duos. But what kind of narratives
could they create?

 It casts Muslim women in a confined role

The photographs present Muslim women as veiled, afflicted but also in a gesture of caring. Their
association with the Madonna and Pieta imprisons them in a unique mother role. But Mary is an
ambivalent figure. She represents the dedication of a mother, but only that. She is known and
invoked by other religions as the mother of Jesus or when a child is desired. Instead of the
‘Algerian Madonna’, French sculptor Pascal Convert, proposed to call Um Saad, ‘the Algerian
Medea’ according to the Greek tragedy 17, perhaps a more accurate and less religiously tinged
interpretation18.

As Eduard Said (1994, p. 318) describes: “I can see the women everywhere in Palestine [sic] life,
and I see how they exist between the syrupy sentimentalism of roles we ascribe to them
(mothers, virgins, martyrs) and the annoyance, even dislike, their unassimilated strength
provokes in our warily politicized, automatic manhood”.

 It presents Muslims as victims and martyrs

Titles and photographs suppress political information, showing in each case the epilogue of the
event and its dramatic consequences. Mary is a character who suffers and the Pieta is an
allegory of broken family ties. If the Kosovar and the Yemeni context are situations of injustice
and killings, they are also of the realm of auto determination. Nasimi Elshani (Merillon’s
photographs), died fighting for the independence of his future country and Zayed was injured
after demonstrating against Yemen’s President Saleh. So aren’t the photographs’ contexts first
of all about freedom? Why do the editors’ choices end up with pain, sorrow and death? Suzan
Sontag (2003, p.70) explains that “the more remote or exotic the place, the more likely we are
to have full frontal view of the dead and dying”. The repetition of the representation of Arabs as
victims has created an enduring stereotype.

The other element which confirms the victim stereotype is the notion of martyrdom. In the
Christian icons, Mary’s posture is one of resignation because Jesus is an accepted victim 19.
Indeed, in the Pieta the martyr of Jesus doesn’t call for revenge but for redemption. However, in
the images studied, we observe the presence of imprecation and non-acceptance of the death.

17
Online source available at:
http://www.pascalconvert.fr/histoire/madone_de_Bentalha/medee_lalgerienne.html
18
Medea killed her own children, Pascal Convert makes a parallel with the Algerian civil war
19
See Appendix 8 p.23 : Example of Mary’s affliction in Christian Iconography

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As a consequence, the Christian association represents the victims of the three photographs as
accepted martyrs, a vain sacrifice, and the Muslim dead as deprived of revenge. In the
photographs the fight for freedom and rights is reduced to a dead or injured body.

 It frames Islam as violent

The media’s decision chain emptied the three photographs of their historical reality. The result
is the constitution of a myth. Roland Barthes (1991, p142) specifies that “the myth is a
depoliticized speech and abolishes the complexity of human acts”. But the consequence of
depoliticization constitutes a political act: depoliticization is also dispossession and a subjection
to control. It’s a theory expounded by, Michel Faucault as ‘Power-Knowledge’, labeled
‘Orientalism’ by Eduard Said, it is also what Hall called ‘Stereotyping’. The repetitive
representation of Muslim women and understanding of Muslim conflict are being constructed
through victimization. Stereotype has a deeper structure which is composed by an obvious
representation and an unconscious or suppressed level (Hall, 1997, p263). The hidden
stereotype fixes the idea of a constant violence within Muslims communities 20. The three
photographs celebrated as iconic by the media depict national and political conflicts but titles
like ‘massacre after massacre’ or ‘horror without end’ along with veiled Muslim woman
lamenting lead to the creation of the knowledge of violence as the Sisyphus’ rock of Islam. The
Muslim ritual and the Christian reference confirm the theory formulated by Eduard Said (1997,
p.9) more than 20 years ago that the Middle East is presented as still mired in religion as
opposed to a West which has surpassed the stage of Christianity.

The mass media’s conception of the Muslim world’s events through written and visual religious
references is actually a political enactment, a reminder of another system which has been active
since the middle ages. The Church, to spread its message and political influence, proposed the
icon. Regis Debray (1992, p.135) indicates that for the Church, taking control of the (artistic)
workshops was “to seize a decisive hegemonic lever” 21, proposing a unique “mirror for all”.

20
See Appendix 9 p.24 : other awarded photographs illustrating Muslim conflicts with the same approach
21
Translation by the author

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  It offers a comforting mirror to the audience

With the three images, Western society appears not so secular, the mass media expressing the
need to apprehend the ‘Other’ through the lens of Christian religion. Is it a reinvestment of the
religious in wane, or the simple instrumentalization of it for commercial ends? To solicit the
collective memory with shared references became for the media industry the sugar of Pavlov. It
triggers selected emotions that the consumer would associate with the event. Indeed, “if the
number of readings of a photograph varies according to individuals”, Roland Barthes (2003,
p121) specifies that “it also depends on the kind of knowledge invested in the image”. By the
means of the iconic photo/text duo, a fusional understanding of the other could operate. This is
the principal of the Christian icon in action: “Christ’s suffering merged with the believer’s”
explains David Morgan (1998, p63). But this rapprochement is done in Christian terms, a
manifestation of the ‘Other’ invested with Western values. It tells less about what the West
considers as the ‘Other’ than about the West itself.

This ethnocentric vision reveals that mass media by referring to the Middle Ages’ artistic
practices or painting references from the Renaissance is maintaining Muslim women in the past.
The archaic sacred reference applied to secular political events allows the industry to display at
the same time a model of civic attitude in wane in the western societies and an illusion of a-
temporal universality. As if the present Muslim world was freezed in a European middle-age
Christian past. It frams the Muslim World as “still and placid and eternal “ as Eduard Said used to
denounce22.

4. The discourses on the photographs

Michel Foucault (Hall, 1997, p.73) argues that “it is discourse - not the things in-themselves -
which produces knowledge”, so it is important to observe what photojournalism praised and
how it is praised.

Representation involves authority. The World Press Photo Award represents the reference and
sets the standard for the profession. It is the final stage which definitely confirms a photograph
in its iconic status, and it triggers a massive re-diffusion of the awarded photographs.

 A single photograph for the entire Muslim world

Every year, thousands of pictures from hundreds of photographers are judged by an

international jury panel. Why do winning photographs present the same pattern if the motto of
the W.P.P. is: ‘We exist to inspire understanding of the world through quality photojournalism’.
Lots of media analysts and bloggers have questioned the jury’s choices. For example, Jim
Johnson argues that Aranda’s winning photograph W.P.P. 2012 neglects the real active role
women have played during the Arab spring, “it’s not just cleaning up the place or mourning it” 23.

22
On Orientalism, 1998 (documentary), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVC8EYd_Z_g
23
Online source available at: http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2012/02/uses-of-pieta-
criticisms-of-world-press.html

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Defending her decision, Nina Bergman, Jury member 2012 explains “In the Western media we
seldom see veiled women in this way, at such intimate moment” she adds “it is as if all the
events of the Arab Spring resulted in this single moment” 24.

Nina Bergman summarizes two of the main stereotypes denounced previously. First, the study
conducted for this essay shows that in reality audiences always see veiled women in personal
moments. Second, the political differences from one country to another cannot be reduced to a
mother-son situation. It is also not probable that a Tunisian or Syrian woman totally identifies
with Fatima Al Qaws who is Yemeni.

Like a single voice, another Jury member, confirms this uniform vision of the Arab world:
referring to Aranda’s picture of Yemen Koyo Kouoh sates: “It speaks for the entire region. It
stands for Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria…” 25. The survey conducted for the purpose of this
essay reveals an opposite view. More than half of the Middle Eastern panel 26 answered ‘no’ to
the question ’do you identify with the photo?’. Among those who answered ‘yes’, most
respondents did so because they identified with the women’s way of dressing.

 Justification of the Christian reference

W.P.P. 2012 jury members directly associated Aranda’s winning photograph with references,
echoing the editors. Jury chairman Aidan Sullivan said the image has religious “almost Biblical” 27
overtones. Other W.P.P. 2012 jury member, Patrick Baz (AFP Middle East regional director)
labeled Aranda’s photograph as an‘Islamic Pieta’ on a social media platform. Jury Nina Bergam
explains “I think it’s fantastic that Christian audience can connect in a way that is compassionate
and not prejudicial with the Muslim world” 28. We are not so sure that Eduard Said would agree.
First, she equates Yemen with the entire Muslim world. If the ‘connection’ is not prejudicial, it
offers a limited range of free judgment for the audience which is presented with the single
option of being compassionate.

Finally, denouncing the repetitive choices of the W.P.P. photography critic, Joey Colberg’s
proposal embodies the ‘anti-Christian association’ side by stating “if we called it Western Press
Photo, the name would be a bit more accurate” 29.

24
Available at: http://yementimes.com/en/1546/variety/374/Yemen%E2%80%99s-winning-World-Press-Photo.htm
25
Available at: http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/10/2788979/samuel-aranda-world-press-photo-award
26
On 34 answers, 22 persons no to identify with the picture

27
Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/samuel-aranda-world-press-photo_n_1267663.html
28
Available at: : http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2012/02/uses-of-pieta-criticisms-of-world-press.html

29
Available at: http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2012/02/the_problem_with_western_press_photo/

15
  Photojournalism as fine art

Another particularity of the discourse of the profession is to legitimate its choices by references
to fine Art and ‘high culture’. Christian Caujolle W.P.P. 1991 Jury President admits that
Merillon’s photograph was chosen because of its aesthetic qualities, as at that time, Kosovo
wasn’t in the news.

After their award the three photographs were re-injected in the media circuit under painting
references - ‘Rembrandt’, ‘Michel-Angelo’, ‘mood of a renaissance painting’ - as if the first in the
chain of public managers of meanings, wanted to reaffirm the accuracy of their choices.

At the end, the whole profession celebrates self-created and appointed iconic photographs
using limited criteria, being essentially a mix of allusions to Christian and religious paintings.
According to Michel Foucault (1980), “those who are charged with saying what counts as true”
have created a ‘regime of truth’ about the Muslim world in their own (Western) image. It has
encouraged and made permanent clichés and stereotypes, Muslim conflicts having the face of
veiled howling women. As in the heyday of the Church-state, the images were the condition for
the doctrine – the medium was already the message in those days (Regis Debray, 1992). On the
other hand those who criticize the association of Christian imagery to a Muslim context rarely
take into consideration that perhaps the Muslim audience could relate to and appreciate those
photographs and be also able to associate the pictures with the characters of Mary and Jesus.
Providing, finally, as much as stereotype as the ‘pro-Christian association’ side.

If those photographs are inescapably symbolic, and stereotype is necessary for societies to
apprehend ‘otherness’, it is vital to try and understand how the subjects of those photographs
see the images and themselves.

16
 CONCLUSION

The destiny of the three photographs studied is only complete with the viewer’s interpretation.
On the one hand, the way in which the pictures were published could be said to dispossess
Muslim suffering, but on the other hand there are the unexpected readings of Aranda’s image
by a small Middle Eastern panel. For instance, it was shown that Muslim audiences could also
associate Christian references to a Muslim context 30, or that this audience doesn’t automatically
identify with whatever is happening in the Muslim world.

More significantly, the actual subjects of the photographs, each in their own way, re-
appropriated what the media made of them.

Merillon’s photographs became quickly a local symbol of the fight for the cause of Kosovo.
When nine years after Nasimi Elshani’s death, the Serb paramilitaries attacked his village, his
sister had just the time to bury Merillon’s picture in the garden. The family dug out the
photograph when they came back.

In the same way, the words of Fatima Al Qaws, talking about Aranda’s photograph, change our
reading of it: “it makes me very happy to see this picture, to see also that it has won such a
prestigious award. It makes me proud. Proud for being a woman… a mother… for being Yemeni.
I am very proud that this photo is going around the world and that many people have seen it” 31.

Finally, contrary to the two other situations, Um Saad and the Algerian government sued Hocine
Zaourar and the AFP on the eve of the 1997’s World Press Photo. One of the accusations was
having been called ‘Madonna’, another, ‘interference in domestic affairs’. According to Pascal
Convert’ s - who made a documentary about Hocine Zaourar’s photograph- the image is
disturbing because it reveals the link which unifies the ex-settler to the former colonized.
Algerian journalist Mohamed Sifoui adds that the photo came “in a context when no one [sic]
didn’t trust anyone anymore”32.

Those details on the photographs’ context resonate so well with Roland Barthes’ comments
written sixty years ago33 about The Family of Man Exhibition (1991, p.102): “it is this entirely
historified work which we should be told, instead of an eternal aesthetics of laborious gestures”.

For him, the eternal lyricism of death on display is to give the immobility of the world an alibi of
wisdom. His fear still sound so up to date in modern journalism.

30
See Appendix 10 p.25: survey’s results question 5
31
Available at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17111673
32
‘La Madone de Bentalha’, 2004 (documentary). Pascal Convert
33
Roland Barthes wrote the texts of ‘Mythology’ between 1954 and 1956

17
 APPENDIX

1. With the flash of the camera crew: Georges Mérillon, Nagavc-Kosovo, 29/01 1990. The
wake of NasimiElshani

2. Hands as private and public gestures

18
 3. Lamentation in Hisory

Ancient Egypt papyrus: the big wailing woman and Ancient Greece representation of lamentation
the little wailing woman lament Osiris

19
4. Hocine Zaourar’s photographs front pages on the 23/09/1997

5. HocineZaourar’s contact sheet (in braquets the original photo chosen)

20
 6. Examples of photographs’ layout

‘Le monde’ newspaper-26/09/97: A Madonna in Hell

21
7. Orientalist period vs current coverage of the Middle Eastern woman

Recent book covers on Middle Eastern women

22
8. The resignation of Mary in Christian Iconography

Enguerrand Charonton, Pietà de Malopolski Pieta, Lesser Poland Master

Villeneuve lès Avignon 1460 1450

Rogier van der Weyden (1399-1400 - 1464) Jan lievens, lamentation of Christ
The Crucifixion

23
9. The Muslim violence through the suffering of the women with the culprit off stage

2013 Pulitzer Prize, breaking news

category, Manu Brado

2013, World Press Photo, 1st Prize

Stories
Alessio Romenzi

2012 World Press Photo, 2nd prize

Spot Photo category
Massoud Hossaini AFP

24
 10. Few result’s survey

Middle Eastern Muslim Audience Panel Western Christian Panel

25
Middle Eastern Muslim Audience Panel Western Christian Panel

26
 REFERENCES
 

-Barthes, R., 1947. Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers, New-York: the Noonday press,
edition 1991

-Barthes, R., (1977): Image-Music-Text, translated by Stefen Health, London: FontanaPress

-Barthes, R., 1964. Rhetoric of the Image in Liz Wells, 2003, The Photography Reader, London,
Routledge. Read it here:

-Debray, R., 1992. Vie et mort de l’image, France : Gallimard

-Griffin, M., 2004 `Picturing America's "War on Terrorism" in Afghanistan and Iraq: Photographic
Motifs as News Frames', Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 5(4):381-402.

-Foucault, M., 1980. Power/knowledge, Brighton, Harvester

-Hall, S.,1997. "The Spectacle of the 'Other'," and ”The work of representation” in S. Hall (Ed.)
Representations. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage and the Open
University, pp. 223-279
-Hariman, R. and Lucaites J-L., 2007. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and
Liberal Democracy Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press

-Levi Strauss, D., 2003. “The Documentary Debate: Aesthetic or Anaesthetic”, and “Epiphany of
the Other” in Between The Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics . New-York: Aperture

-Mitchell, W.J.T., (1994) Picture Theory, University of Chicago Press. Chapter 9: ‘The
Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies’, pp. 281-322. 

-Morgan, D., Visual Piety, Los Angeles: Univerity of California Press

-Mark Reinhard et. al. (eds), 2006, Beautiful Suffering: Photography & the Traffic in Pain.
University of Chicago Press. Chapter 1: ‘Picturing Violence,’ by Mark Reinhardt, pp. 13-36.

-Said, E., in Mitchell, W.J.T. (1994) Picture Theory, University of Chicago Press. Chapter 9: ‘The
Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies’, pp. 281-322. 

-Said, E. W., 1978. Orientalism, wester conception of the Orient, England: Penguin Book

-Said, E. W., 1997. Covering Islam, Berkshire: Vintage

-Sontag, Z., 2003. Regarding the Pain of Other, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Online Articles:

-Campbell, D., 2011. How has photojournalism framed the war in Afghanistan?:
http://www.david-campbell.org/wp-content/documents/Framing_the_war_in_Afghanistan.pdf

-Campbell, D., 2011The problem with regarding the photography of suffering as ‘pornography’
http://www.david-campbell.org/2011/01/21/problem-with-regarding-photography-of-suffering-
as-pornography/

-Convert, P., 2003. ‘Medee l’algerienne’:

http://www.pascalconvert.fr/histoire/madone_de_Bentalha/medee_lalgerienne.html

-Grundberg, A., 1989

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/arts/photography-view-photojournalism-heroism-meets-
esthetics.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

-Gunthert, A., 2013."Les icônes du photojournalisme, ou la narration visuelle inavouable":

http://culturevisuelle.org/icones/2609

-Hauberman, G., 2011. « Image, événement, durée », Images Re-vues [Online], hors-série

1 | 2008, http://imagesrevues.revues.org/787

Blogs:

-http://www.david-campbell.org

-http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2012/02/uses-of-pieta-criticisms-of-world-
press.html

-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17111673

-http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2145521/world-press-photo-
winning-image-reference-michelangelos-piet

-http://yementimes.com/en/1546/variety/374/Yemen%E2%80%99s-winning-World-Press-
Photo.htm

-http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/10/2788979/samuel-aranda-world-press-photo-award

-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/samuel-aranda-world-press-
photo_n_1267663.html

-http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2012/02/uses-of-pieta-criticisms-of-world-
press.html

-http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2012/02/the_problem_with_western_press_photo/

28
Video

- How Art made the world, the death and back, BBC documentary, presented by Dr Spivey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgAVfQyIO0Y

-‘La Madone de Bentalha’, 2004 (documentary). Pascal Convert (with English subtitles)

http://www.pascalconvert.fr/histoire/madone_de_Bentalha/madone_de_bentalha_film.html

-On Orientalism, 1998 (documentary), Director Sut Jhally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=fVC8EYd_Z_g

-Interview with Edward Said

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=676fB7ExZys

29