Sasha Morse | Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London (original) (raw)
Papers by Sasha Morse
How can swimming pool related art installations create an awareness of presence and absence and s... more How can swimming pool related art installations create an awareness of presence and absence and social change in local communities?
The political role of the private collection transformed into a public museum.
Susie Linfield’s’ elucidation on American photojournalist James Nachtwey has underpinned the cent... more Susie Linfield’s’ elucidation on American photojournalist James Nachtwey has underpinned the central argument of this dissertation: ‘His gifts and his shortcomings sometimes infuriate, but they force us to look closer and, at the very least fail better. And so we need James Nachtwey’s photographs: even though, almost surely, we don’t want them.’2 To analyse Nachtwey’s photographs, their cultural and journalistic value and their effect on collective memory is to concede that not wanting them, not wanting to look at them, is an inherent part of bearing witness to their atrocious content. It is also to acknowledge that the atrocity photograph has a profound influence on collective memory and collective consciousness. And yet the assertion that ‘we need James Nachtwey’s photographs'3 requires further exploration. This dissertation identifies, through a comparison between Nachtwey’s photographs and those of the liberation of Bergen Belsen concentration camp, a perpetuation of an iconography of horror in Nachtwey’s work. This perpetuation is symptomatic of the Holocaust photographs having set a precedent for the way in which contemporary atrocity photographs are created and understood. Therefore, in their relation to collective memory Nachtwey’s photographs are argued to be problematic; not only for what they depict but also for how they depict it.
This dissertation applies the work of theorists to ground the comparison between the two sets of images. The scholastic predictions for the future of memory studies are used to inform an awareness of the homogenisation of all atrocity photography in order for dynamic remembrance and the atrocity photograph’s influence on collective memory to be preserved. If timeless remembrance is to be preserved, then the ghosts of those depicted in atrocity photographs, the ghosts of those that suffered, must find a lasting presence in the atrocity photograph that is unaffected by the legacies of the photographs that came before them and those that are yet to come.
'Furtive and untimely, the apparition of the specter does not belong to that time, it does not give time, not that one:' Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost'. [Hamlet]4
2 Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 2010) p. 231
3Linfield, The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence, p. 231
4 Shakespeare, Hamlet cited by Derrida in Exordium in Specters of Marx, trans. P. Kamuf, p. xix
How can swimming pool related art installations create an awareness of presence and absence and s... more How can swimming pool related art installations create an awareness of presence and absence and social change in local communities?
The political role of the private collection transformed into a public museum.
Susie Linfield’s’ elucidation on American photojournalist James Nachtwey has underpinned the cent... more Susie Linfield’s’ elucidation on American photojournalist James Nachtwey has underpinned the central argument of this dissertation: ‘His gifts and his shortcomings sometimes infuriate, but they force us to look closer and, at the very least fail better. And so we need James Nachtwey’s photographs: even though, almost surely, we don’t want them.’2 To analyse Nachtwey’s photographs, their cultural and journalistic value and their effect on collective memory is to concede that not wanting them, not wanting to look at them, is an inherent part of bearing witness to their atrocious content. It is also to acknowledge that the atrocity photograph has a profound influence on collective memory and collective consciousness. And yet the assertion that ‘we need James Nachtwey’s photographs'3 requires further exploration. This dissertation identifies, through a comparison between Nachtwey’s photographs and those of the liberation of Bergen Belsen concentration camp, a perpetuation of an iconography of horror in Nachtwey’s work. This perpetuation is symptomatic of the Holocaust photographs having set a precedent for the way in which contemporary atrocity photographs are created and understood. Therefore, in their relation to collective memory Nachtwey’s photographs are argued to be problematic; not only for what they depict but also for how they depict it.
This dissertation applies the work of theorists to ground the comparison between the two sets of images. The scholastic predictions for the future of memory studies are used to inform an awareness of the homogenisation of all atrocity photography in order for dynamic remembrance and the atrocity photograph’s influence on collective memory to be preserved. If timeless remembrance is to be preserved, then the ghosts of those depicted in atrocity photographs, the ghosts of those that suffered, must find a lasting presence in the atrocity photograph that is unaffected by the legacies of the photographs that came before them and those that are yet to come.
'Furtive and untimely, the apparition of the specter does not belong to that time, it does not give time, not that one:' Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost'. [Hamlet]4
2 Susie Linfield, The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 2010) p. 231
3Linfield, The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence, p. 231
4 Shakespeare, Hamlet cited by Derrida in Exordium in Specters of Marx, trans. P. Kamuf, p. xix