Artist Lecture Response – Dr. Jane Blocker

Eyes of the World: Contemporary Photography and the Ethics of Witness in Rwanda ///// Dr. Jane Blocker has spent her time studying the Rwandan genocide of 1994 as an “image event”. The genocide was an image event for a couple of reasons. To the West, all that was seen were images without any first-hand experience of what was going on when 800,000 Hutus were slaughtered. The images seemed unreal and were thus almost easier to ignore. The West also took the stance of not being held responsible for what they were seeing. Next, as the focus of Blocker’s lecture, the genocide was an image event for the photographers because they could not fully fathom what they had seen first-hand. As she described it, “[Even the] photographers were forced to imagine the scene.” ///// One photographer Dr. Blocker talked about in depth was Alfredo Jaar. When Jaar came back from Rwanda he did something new and interesting with his exhibition on what he had seen. For every photo he took in Rwanda, he “buried it”. His photos were individually placed in black boxes, each labeled with a caption describing what could be seen in the photograph inside. Whereas viewers could read about the photo inside the box, they could not see it. There were a couple reasons why Jaar did this. First and foremost, he could not deal with what he had documented. The majority of his photos were simply horrific. Then, he felt that by not showing his photographs he was making more of a statement. At this point the West was suddenly overwhelmed with images and reports of what had happened in Rwanda and they still were not holding themselves responsible. Choosing not to add to the endless charade of photo horror that was simply not getting through to people, Jaar instead had viewers of his exhibition read first hand accounts of what he had seen, forcing them to think about what they were not seeing. ///// While this lecture was fascinating for various reasons, I felt that Dr. Blocker did not focus enough on individual photographers who had documented the Rwandan genocide. I got the feeling from the beginning of the lecture that this is what would be covered, but then she seemed to stray to talk about other issues such as the satellite as an unmanned camera and how it was photography from such devices that lay the groundwork for our invasion of Iraq. I understand that she was trying to make a parallel with Rwanda and how photography can change the way we view things, but it didn’t quite add up for me. Nevertheless, I liked her descriptions of how photographers and the West have both viewed and dealt with the genocide. I think she is right in that we were all “genocide tourists”.