ZEKE Fall 2019

ENTARY
WHY GOOD PICTURES OF
BAD THINGS MATTER
By Glenn Ruga
more significantly, a text-heavy factual
account will only draw the scholarly,
intellectually curious, or the activist
and not the ubiquitous everyman/
everywoman with a job, children, rent/
mortgage, and driven towards stability
for themselves and their family. The
majority of people on our planet don’t
have the time nor the mental capacity to
engage, but might pay attention when
their sensibility is stopped in its tracks by
a photo such as the Syrian child Aylan
Kurdi dead on a beach in Turkey.
The second reason I believe gets to
a more fundamental issue. The human
race is capable of the basest and ugliest
actions as evidenced by the many genocides
(loosely defined) committed just in
the last hundred years (the Holocaust,
Armenia, Rwanda, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Sudan, Darfur, Bosnia, Syria,
DRC, Rohingya, etc.) But the human race
is also capable of great heights of intellectual,
emotional, physical, cultural, and
magical achievements such as love, birth,
Mozart, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King,
NASA, Pablo Picasso, Pablo Casals,
Billie Holiday, Nelson Mandela, Vincent
Van Gough, Serena and Venus Williams,
Henri Cartier Bresson, Toni Morrison
as well as the drawings of children the
world over.
Acts of Defiance
For all who strive for beauty in the face
of suffering, it is an act of defiance
against those who bring misery on
this planet, and what is a more perfect
example than an artist striving for perfection
where misery abounds.
In her exhibit on SDN titled Mourning
Kobané, Paris-based Iranian photographer
Maryam Ashrafi made this stunning
photograph of a young woman who,
along with members of YPJ (Women’s
Protection Units), “mourn during the
ceremony for Ageri, their fellow fighter,
who was killed during clashes with
Islamic State in Eastern frontline of
Kobané, Syria.” This photograph is not
of dead comrades or headless victims of
the despicable Islamic State. Rather it is
a stunning portrait shot not in a studio
with lights and assistants but rather
under challenging conditions during a
funeral wrought with intense emotions
and under constant fear of attack. The
young woman’s eyes, her gaze, her colorful
scarf and military fatigues, the soft
blue sky and horizon line so thoughtfully
placed, the woman on the left side of the
frame, possibly injured in battle, all create
a stunning work of art. How can one
not be moved by this? What happened?
Who are the YPJ (a heroic story unto
itself)? The photo is a weapon against
the horrors of the Islamic State. Its secondary
target is all who say that women
cannot engage and triumph in battle.
The power of this beautiful photo of a
Kurdish warrior I hope has launched a
thousand people to join her struggle to
save the Kurdish and other residents of
Kobané from ISIS. (nb. Sarina, the subject
of this photo, was martyred in battle
in the fall of 2018.)
Kurdish photographer Younes
Mohammad has extensively photographed
the wars and carnage in Iraq
Photo by Younes Mohammad. Mosul, Iraq: A man from
the Ghadesiya neighborhood was wounded during the battle
for Mosul by a suicide ISIS car bomb. He was rescued and
treated by medics of the Iraqi army in a field clinic.
and Syria. His portfolio includes some
very graphic images of bodily destruction
caused by war. But it is not the gore
that makes him a great photographer,
rather it is his photographs of the passion,
tenacity, and emotional depths of
his subjects amidst such horrible conditions
that have lasting value. His photograph
in his SDN exhibit on the battle
for Mosul, In Less than an Hour, of a
man from the Ghadesiya neighborhood
wounded during the battle for Mosul by
a suicide ISIS car bomb, is a stunning
example of a great photo made during
battle. The young man (by the caption
we assume he survives) has the look of
calmness while medics are rushing into
action. The photograph makes interesting
use of color (blue latex gloves, blue
jacket liner, and contrasting yellow plastic
stretcher) and strong linear elements
of the medics’ arms and the aluminum
frame of the gurney, all pointing toward
the central subject—the wounded soldier
who lays calm amid chaos. Younes reassures
us that although chaos reigns on
the battlefield, it has not destroyed our
soul as a species.
Turning to other parts of the world
and other issues, the SDN website has
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