ABSTRACT
The literature on the relationship between trauma and photography follows two main directions. The first considers the capabilities of the photographic medium when it comes to representing, registering and mediating the experience of trauma. The second has to do with the photographic representation of traumatic events and its effects on the spectator. Trauma theory, influenced by psychoanalysis, has described trauma as something that took place when individuals experienced events that they were incapable of processing using normal or habitual forms of knowledge. Hariman and Lucaites’s interpretation reflects a broader shift in trauma studies away from the individual, event-based model of trauma to a more cultural understanding of the phenomenon, mediated by images. The spectator’s duty is to respond actively to the claims addressed to her through photography, by performing “spectatorial acts” and reconstructing the situation that led to the emergence of trauma.
