Butler- “Torture and the Ethics of Photography”

In Butler’s article, “Torture and the Ethics of Photography,” she discusses many concepts regarding the interpretation and framing of war photography though critiquing similar arguments made by Susan Sontag. She also writes about embedded reporting, an important concept to war photography, that insists upon the media not releasing images of the dead in order to mainly report the action without a specific perspective. However, she questions this principle in that the government and military leaders are already selecting a specific perspective from which society is meant to view the information. Butler then goes on to discuss the implications of the framing of photographs in context and how they evoke feelings within the viewer.

This article and its topics reminded me of the situation following the death of Osama bin Laden. The photographic evidence of bin Laden’s death was deemed extremely controversial. I think that the U.S. government withholding the image of the body from the world falls under this category of embedded reporting as discussed by Butler. The government decided not to release the photo on the grounds that it could incite more violence and poses a threat to the American public. Select few in government and military offices were able to view the photo, and simply told the rest of the world their interpretation of the photo. Therefore, as Butler argues, this concept of embedded reporting seems to be contradictory in that the U.S. government did not want people framing the context of the image, however they do just that in offering their own framing and feeding it down to the public. This also illustrates the power of images in that they have the capability to come to represent a national identity, a concept also discussed by Butler.