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Without Sanctuary
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I came across this collection of photographs and the audio narrative that accompanies them while researching the history of the song “Strange Fruit”, made famous by Billie Holliday and covered by people like John Martyn.
It makes for compelling, if disturbing, viewing and looking at the crowds that attended these “events” it really makes you wonder about the kind of animal the human race is capable of being.
The images are quite shocking at times, even by todays gory standards, but as the narrator says, the real horror is in the smiling faces of the spectators.
http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html
R
That site asks a lot of hard questions alright-
I came across it about a year ago, considered putting it here, but…
I wrote this on another forum at the time,
don’t really want to go back there…“While it does seem abhorrent that these pictures could be taken, displayed, copyrighted even,
and it also seems that the photographers, in the whole, were complicit in these acts,
I think its probably better that the pictures were made-
lest we forget, or were never to have known-I haven’t visited their forum, and there are bound to be more informed views there-
but the power of these pictures is far greater in their immediacy, than any amount of words hidden in books-May they all rest in peace-
words are wholly inadequate-joseph
Expresbro wrote:
It makes for compelling, if disturbing, viewing and looking at the crowds that attended these “events” it really makes you wonder about the kind of animal the human race is capable of being.
and just in case anyone thinks it is just part of America’s dark past – here’s a little slice of what we (Irish )as a people are capable of… a lynching dating from 1988 just 21 years ago :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzWSoFszn9U
Seoirse wrote:
Expresbro wrote:
It makes for compelling, if disturbing, viewing and looking at the crowds that attended these “events” it really makes you wonder about the kind of animal the human race is capable of being.
and just in case anyone thinks it is just part of America’s dark past – here’s a little slice of what we (Irish )as a people are capable of… a lynching dating from 1988 just 21 years ago :
Just looked at that youtube link and even though that happened twenty one years ago the sentiments still haven’t gone away. Just look at the comments below the clip and see when they were written! I think that psychopaths will always find a cause to justify vicious actions such as these. I can never fathom how people can consider that these actions might be acceptable, I can never understand how some people can be so callous and brutal to anyone or anything. Some people seem to have a streak of badness in them, an element of meanness which can only be described as being nasty for the sake of being nasty. We all witness it on a regular basis but on occasions it elevates to an extent that it gains global notoriety, as in the link at the start of this thread.
I could never understand the mentality of this. How anyone could consider it acceptable to treat anyone else in this manner because they were the ‘wrong’ colour/religion/nationality/. . . insert your own heading here . . .! Look at the headlines of the papers and you see examples every day of what people are capable of. Sorry for this mini rant but it bugs me that people can be so irrationally hostile, amoral and callous. Nothing can rationalise or justify it.People can be irrationally hostile amoral and callous. why cant they justify it
I for one was brought up in Derry through the troubles and I do have a hatred for the british armed forces
When I was nine myself and 11 year old friend were messing about and the nightly riot started,It was an
every night thing in that part of the bogside as the forces closed the gates on the Derry walls.Stephen was shot in the
back of the head and died 3 days later,a very brave soldier fired a plastic bullet from the comfort of his armoured carThe brave soilder was never prosecuted
cathald wrote:
People can be irrationally hostile amoral and callous. why cant they justify it
I for one was brought up in Derry through the troubles and I do have a hatred for the british armed forces
When I was nine myself and 11 year old friend were messing about and the nightly riot started,It was an
every night thing in that part of the bogside as the forces closed the gates on the Derry walls.Stephen was shot in the
back of the head and died 3 days later,a very brave soldier fired a plastic bullet from the comfort of his armoured carThe brave soilder was never prosecuted
That is a very sad and tragic memory from your childhood Cathal. I’m sorry that happened.
However, this and a myriad of other wrongs which were committed by all sides during the Troubles still can’t disguise or justify the fact that some humans are capable of lynch-mob depravity such as that depicted so graphically in the video above.
I fully understand that your experiences at the hands of armed forces (both military and para-military) have influenced the way you feel.
But, as a mature man do you still feel that what was meted out to the two sodiers was justified?
So, tdr, was there a peaceful or non-violent alternative to the Irish Civil War?
History has proven that civil war is an inevitable outcome of a nation’s development: it is inevitable that differences will emerge that are so fundamental that they will lead to violence.
When humans restort to violence, there is a cummulative, mob-like and soulless aspect to their behaviour. Hatred is not rational.
The original post and the u-tube link illustrate some of the worst behaviour that humans are capable of. I often wonder are we equally culpable by our inaction, e.g. not insisiting that our politicians work to resolve the Darfu situation. By not demanding such direct intervention, are we any more morally superior than those committing the attrocities?
BM wrote:
So, tdr, was there a peaceful or non-violent alternative to the Irish Civil War?
History has proven that civil war is an inevitable outcome of a nation’s development: it is inevitable that differences will emerge that are so fundamental that they will lead to violence.
When humans restort to violence, there is a cummulative, mob-like and soulless aspect to their behaviour. Hatred is not rational.
The original post and the u-tube link illustrate some of the worst behaviour that humans are capable of. I often wonder are we equally culpable by our inaction, e.g. not insisiting that our politicians work to resolve the Darfu situation. By not demanding such direct intervention, are we any more morally superior than those committing the attrocities?
Are you telling me that both you and Cathal joined a mob and participated in atrocities. Somehow, I don’t think so. Yes, horrible things happened on both sides of the conflict but at the end of the day were you there posing with a person suspended from a lamp post or were you encouraging and cheering on a crowd as it tortured and mutilated some one from the other side of the row. I don’t believe that that is in your nature, that you would have a moral barrier which would tell you that there is something wrong with this.
Obviously, there are occasions where there will be physical conflict, but surely random acts of brutality as depicted in the photographs of lynching are not acts that are perpetrated against aggressors. They were against a minority purely because of the colour of their skin. They were against a minority who were considered to have no value and consequently no rights.
Is it right to torture and kill someone purely because they are a Catholic or Protestant or they had associated with someone from the other religion? Or happened to walk down the wrong street?
Are you telling me that that is justifiable?I didn’t state anything about justification – merely supporting the original post in that humans are capable of terrible behaviour and that it is in our nature (albeit that modern society now expects a different set of behavioural patterns).
My original point was that humans resort to to violence when no effective alternatives are available (e.g. the aftermath of Bloody Sunday). Once violence finds some aspect of acceptance, it is in human nature to allow it to escalate – sometimes out of control – such as civil wars.
Equally, violence is bourne out of bigotory fed by fear (as well as base human nature) – evidenced in the lynchings and the murder of the corporals.
However, we run the risk of placing normal, modern and rational perspectives on abnormal and irrational behaviour.
I know this is General Chat-
and it can go anywhere-But this is a photography site,
and there are other questions-
For example, the role of photography in recording these events,
and the dilemmas (or not) faced by the photographer-In the original post, that website,
the role of the photographer was to take the pictures, and sell them.
They would often be sent as postcards.In the later post, news cameramen are to be seen in much the same role-
the news rolls on, and we consume it.There is a complicity in the process of recording,
and perhaps not much has changed in a hundred years-
although the cameramen twenty years ago might not have shared the obvious glee of the lynch mobs in the US-
a lot of whom, don’t forget, would have been Irish too-joseph
Personally I don’t think that a photographer should be burdened too much by out-side evaluation of his or her moral purposes, as long as they are not taking photos to misrepresent a scene.
I say this because these photos, as with those, for example, from Abu Ghraib and from the Nazi’s provide us with a reality which without the photos would be so much more abstract. In some cases it’s only the photos that make it fully real.
Even though these photographers may be fully complicit, and took photos for fun, or proud memories or whatever, the strength of the photos are so important that discouraging such a permanent witness would be a bad idea.On a connected note, I also have this opinion because the last book I read, The Bang Bang Club, deals partially with the life of Kevin Carter and details the trouble the photo of the famine child and vulture brought on him.
He got many many questions on whether he intervened/helped and these questioned troubled him a lot. His photo, probably more than any other, is credited with hugely improving aid agencies ability to raise money. But he seemed to have been heavily harassed about his ethics, and it burdened him a lot.Btw the book also deals with how the photojournalists in the club came up with some ground rules for how they should balance the huge abstract potential of good-effect that the photos could produce vs the real help they could give by putting down their cameras and helping. Also the authors actually describe being at mob executions and what they were feeling at the time.
Great book, all true, soon to be a Hollywood movie I believe.The using of the lynching photos as postcards etc is a symptom of a sickness, the core sickness is the big problem that needs to be dealt with.
And this symptom, can help focus attention on the core problem, [one can imagine these photos leaking out and having a huge effect on decent people to act], so can in some way be a ‘positive’ thing.Thanks for posting the link Rob.
Martin
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