January 2, 2007

Since its inception, the conflict in Iraq has been "A War Waged in Images," to quote the title of an article I wrote for American Photo and the Digital Journalist Web site in 2003. And perhaps the greatest sea-change in the visual documentation of the war has been the use of cameras by combatants.

At its best, the proper lens placed in the proper hands--not in the hands of propagandists, but in the hands of those hoping to expose the truth--has served as a window onto atrocitiy. The Abu Ghraib scandal would never have come to light had GIs not photographed their actions and had a courageous whistle-blower not made it his mission to burn two CD-ROMs, filling them with telltale images of abuse to share with his commanding officers. What's more, the urgency of combat scenes (sent over the Internet on home vides taken by soldiers themselves, and captured in several recent documentary films such as The War Tapes) continue to underscore the reality of a war that is often off-limits to Western news crews.

The nadir of this new trend, however, is the new "Hussein Hanging" video, currently circulating on Al-Jazeera Television and elsewhere.

In this instance, combatants--one or two guards present as witnesses to Saddam's execution--brought along camera-equipped cell phones to document the deed. When footage like this courses through the digital ether, justice is trivialized, as is any sense of real retribution for crimes Saddam had ordered against thousands of victims over the decades. In the end viewers around the world come away doubting not the hanging itself but the motives behind the court that ruled in favor of the hanging. Hussein's death becomes not the result of prudent jurisprudence but the excuse for pure spectacle.

Then again, maybe the swift ubiquity of the footage and its strange theatricality will make some viewers actually doubt its authenticity. Next, I suppose, we'll hear from those in conspiracy circles that the hanging was a staged perfromance, filmed on the same secret soundstage in a desert out West where the Apollo moonwalks and the 9/11 attacks were shot.

Some will even rush to critique the dim lighting, garbled taunting, and shoddy production values.