ABSTRACT
In the lynchings and the abuses at Abu Ghraib the unashamed, boastful poses and smiling faces of onlookers and participants indicate a particular relationship with the camera, and with those of us on the other side of the lens. The images of abuse at Abu Ghraib, by contrast, indicate a shift in the use of the photograph. They were fully intended to be widely shared and disseminated. The pictures taken by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib, however, reflect a shift in the use made of pictures – less objects to be saved than messages to be disseminated, circulated. Yet pictures of prisoners bound in painful positions, or made to stand with outstretched arms, are infrequent. The Bush administration and its defenders have chiefly sought to limit a public-relations disaster – the dissemination of the photographs – rather than deal with the complex crimes of leadership and of policy revealed by the pictures.
