PICS 2012 Special Edition Newspaper by PhotoVoice

UNCERTAIN STATES Presents - PICS 2012 Photographic Images Changing Society

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Mind Over Matter Dementia, which literally means ‘without mind’ affects cognition and can cause dysfunction of memory, attention, language or problem solving. In many cases dementia can lead to a total disorientation of time; not knowing the day of the week, the month, or even what year it is. It can also cause disorientation of place as well as loss of memory of people i.e. not knowing who they are or knowing others around them. Understanding the science of this disease entails undertaking research on human brain tissue from donors, drawn from both people who were affected by dementia and people who were not. The practice of retaining bodily parts for medical research has been rendered abject through past cases of unethical practice and adverse media attention.

Compassion Fatigue The dream of photojournalism is that when a crisis is pictured the image will have an effect on its audience leading to action. However, according to Jacques RanciËre, the dominant mood of our time revolves around ìa general suspicion about the political capacity of any image.î This suspicion is generated in part by ìthe disappointed belief in a straight lineî ñ as visualised in the photography of Sarkozy at Rwandaís genocide museum ñ ìfrom perception, affection, comprehension and actionî. [Jacques RanciËre, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. by Gregory Elliot (London, 2009), p. 103] Before we can construct a meaningful account that traces possible links between visual representation, knowledge and action, we need to dispense with some conventional wisdoms that purport to explain how photographs work. I believe one of the largest obstacles to be removed is the ëcompassion fatigueí thesis. One of the commonest claims relating to the alleged impact of photographs of atrocity, violence and war is that they induce ëcompassion fatigueí in the public at large. This claim often starts with an assertion about our media saturated world, and is part of the general suspicion about the capacity of images RanciËre noted. At its heart is the notion that, far from changing the world, photographs work repetitively, numbing our emotional capacity and thereby diminishing the possibility of an effective response to international crises. Expressions of this belief can be found in a wide range of disparate contexts. In an interview following his World Press Photo award, photography Pietro Mastruzo noted ìShocking pictures do not really communicate anymore, because the audience is accustomed to looking at themî; the late Magnum photographer Eve Arnold was reported as once saying, ìYou know in the beginning we thought we were going to change the world. I think people live in so much visual material these days, billions of photographs annually, that they grow numb after too much exposureî. Numerous other writers and photographers attest to the ubiquity of this view. I argue in my paper ‘The Myth of Compassion Fatigue’ that the compassion fatigue thesis is an allegory that serves as an alibi for other issues and prevents their investigation. What is notable about compassion fatigue is that it means one thing in the context of health care and social work, and the reverse in relation to the media and politics. From perhaps the 1980s and certainly the 1990s, compassion fatigue was understood as ìSecondary Traumatic Stress Disorder,î and diagnosed in people either suffering directly from trauma or individuals working closely with people suffering trauma. In this context, although it concerned a set of negative impacts on those affected ñ such as reduced pleasure and increased feelings of hopelessness ñ it derived from the problem that ìcaring too much can hurt.î In other words, compassion fatigue was prompted by an excess of compassion rather than a lack of compassion. As the

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Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project states, when caregivers, who have a strong identification with those suffering, fail to practice ìself-careî they can be prone to destructive behaviours. Susan Sontag is the writer who drove much of the popularity of this thesis in relation to photography, and my paper unpacks her arguments in ‘On Photography’, exploring their logic and supporting evidence (or lack thereof) before discussing how she retracted much of them in ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’. Sontagís reversal has had little impact on the ubiquity of the compassion fatigue thesis, and that is in a large part a result of arguments like those found in Susan Moellerís book ‘Compassion Fatigue’. The third section of the paper dissects Moellerís claims to reveal how in her hand ëcompassion fatigueí is an empty signifier that becomes attached to a range of often contradictory explanations and factors.

David Campbell David’s full paper ‘The Myth of Compassion Fatigue’ can be accessed on his website, along with other papers on topics related to photography and its impact on society. www.david-campbell.org Shortcut to the draft paper: bit.ly/dc_compassionfatigue David is also co-editor of the Imaging Famine website, a research project that details how famine has been represented in the media, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Its aim is to provoke a debate about the political effect of such images, particularly photographs, in our understanding of the majority world. www.imaging-famine.org

‘Mind Over Matter’, a science and art project supported by the Wellcome Trust People Award, demystifies what happens behind the doors of brain bank laboratories, and in so doing actively seeks to rehabilitate the practice of bodily donation in the public imagination. The ‘Mind Over Matter’ exhibition and book that concluded the three years of the authors’ work between 2008 - 2011, draws back the veil of secrecy that has historically surrounded the practice of bodily donation, to reveal the selfless generosity and courage of individuals who have elected to donate their brains after death for neuroscientific research. Drawing on themes of memory, forgetting, transience of the body, ageing, and brain donation, Ania Dabrowska worked with photography, installation, appropriated archival and medical photographs, video, and sound (in collaboration with the composer Gaetano Serra).

The limits of Moellerís text are exposed in the fourth section of the paper, which reviews all the available evidence of which I am aware relating to the relations between photographs, compassion and charitable responses. None of that evidence supports the compassion fatigue thesis.

Dr Bronwyn Parry and Ania Dabrowska were privileged to meet some of Britain’s oldest prospective brain donors from CC75C and CFAS studies in Cambridge, who agreed to be photographed and interviewed about their lives and involvement in brain research. For these donors death proves not to be the end of life for their brains, but rather a mere stopping off point in a journey that sees them travel out and beyond their bodily lives to the global research laboratories of the future.

While you will need to read the whole paper to consider all the arguments, one bit of data can be presented here. The dictionary definition of compassion fatigue cites the ìdiminishing public responseî to charity appeals as evidence. But is the public response diminishing? In Britain there are 166,000 charities that received donations totalling £10 billion in 2009. In the United States, there are more than 800,000 charitable organisations, and Americans gave them more than $300 billion in 2007. The British publicís response to disasters like the 2010 Haiti earthquake (for which the Disasters Emergency Committee raised £106 million) shows that the willingness to act on empathy for the victims of natural disasters is still considerable even when they are distant.

Mrs Ella Wiltshire 22.05.1908 – 22.02.2009

The DEC conducts consolidated appeals for the fourteen leading aid NGOs in the UK, and a look at their various appeals over the last few years shows that there is a constant willingness to donate, albeit at variable rates, from the 2009 Gaza appealsís £8.3 million to the massive £392 million given for the 2004 Tsunami appeal.

Born in Clapham Common, London, Ella was educated at home and loved history, in particular the Restoration because “they defied the Pope”. She moved to Cambridge after getting married to a handsome and passionate man, Samuel Keith Wiltshire. She thought his name sounded too religious, so she called him Richard. Richard died 50 years ago, but she still thought about him every day. She saw mutual respect and memory as the recipe for lasting love. She was a good cook; enjoyed sirloin, rib eye and crab the most. She loved modeling clothes. Her favourite memory was walking down the aisle. Her favourite age was about fifty, when she felt she had done the things she wanted to do. She proudly told us that for her 100th birthday she had enjoyed the entertainments of a male stripper.

There is, then, no absence of compassion as expressed in charitable giving. That, however, is not to say that all issues are responded to equally. There are clearly differential responses, but these do not add up to the generally diminished response named ëcompassion fatigueí. It is time to remove this myth as an obstacle to understanding how photographs of extreme situations can and do work. I hope you will read the paper and engage the argument. It is a draft, and there is much scope for improvement.

Mind over Matter - Ania Dabrowska Headrest, After I’m Gone series, 2011

“The brain is a very clever thing. I remember back; a hundred years is a long time. You live as long as you are remembered, it is all mind over matter. Anything I can do, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.” 29 January 2009

Visual representation of organ donors is unprecedented in the UK and the project is groundbreaking in keeping these donors from anonymity. In reflecting on why bodily donation has always been a strictly anonymous activity, the authors explore what the ethical, psychological, religious and social implications are for donors, their families and researchers in re-negotiating the historical relationship between anonymity, objectivity and the impartiality of science. As some of the donors who participated in ‘Mind Over Matter’ have now passed away, the project provides a unique record of their philosophies on life, the relationship between memory and identity, death, donation and the ephemerality of the body.

Ania Dabrowska, b.1973, Poland, lives and works in London. Completed MA Photography at LCC, 2007. She works in a variety of media, using photography, video, and installations. She has exhibited in the UK and internationally since 2001. Fine Art/Photography lecturer and participatory photography projects facilitator (PhotoVoice, CAST, SPACE). SPACE Artist in residence at Arlington since 2010. www.mindovermatterproject.co.uk www.ania-dabrowska.co.uk