ABSTRACT
Trauma imagery holds immense political power. By bringing hardship, pain and suffering into focus, trauma images shock and horrify. This chapter examines the politics and possibilities that can be both opened – and somewhat paradoxically, closed – by imaging trauma. It focuses specifically on the role of affect and emotion, showing how the emotions communicated, interpreted and enacted through imagery are key to trauma's political potentials. For many scholars, the communicative power of trauma imagery lies in its unique ability to capture aspects of tragedy that are difficult to say: the deeply emotional dimensions. Dominant visual portrayals of the bombing in the media demonstrate the combined emotional and political potentials of imaging trauma. Images of mourning were also complemented with those portraying the compassion, outrage and expediency of the Australian political and security response.
