On Photography and Trauma the Sound of Silence

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On Photography and Trauma: The Sound of Silence

Dr. Shlomo Lee Abrahmov

Holon Institute of TechnologyShenkar College of Engineering and DesignTel 03 502 6612 [email protected]

Abstract

This paper will focus on Barthes's second punctum and how it relates to time and not to

elements within the photograph. In this sense it has immediate relevance to many

photographs of trauma. A detailed description of the famous massacre in Maale

Akrabim in 1954 will ensue including information on the re-creation of the chilling scene

around the ambushed bus. These widely distributed propaganda photographs of the stiff

bodies inside and outside the bus are raising questions about morality, ethics and the

'truth' value of photographs. Using examples from the Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia

and the Yom Kippur war in Sinai, the article will argue that in general, photographs of

trauma raise two polar sensations. The first is the clear confrontation with the horrific

events, the second is the unanswered questions that are resultant from such a

description. This aspect of the photographs, the way we reach and un-reach them, the

conflicting closeness and forced remoteness, our ability to grasp and un-grasp them is

their noeme or in other words their sound of silence.

Barthes’s Two Kinds of Punctums

In Camera Lucida (1), Barthes attempted to describe a method or a personal approach

to observing meaning in photographs. This approach is related to their two attributes;the first is their ordinary nature; the second is their ability to convey meanings that are

special and require engagement with the observed photographs. Barthes related to

these two aspects as the Studium and Punctum . Studium relates to the factual aspects

of the photograph, what it depicts or documents without causing any special sensation

in the viewer. The punctum is this specific detail observed in the photograph which

moves the viewer by ‘pricking’ him. According to Barthes ‘punctum is also: sting, speck,

cut, little hole and also a cast of the dice’ (CL p.27). While this first punctum has gained

much of the focus in discussions and critiques of Camera Lucida (2), later in the book

Barthes described a second punctum that was somewhat overshadowed by the first

mailto:[email protected]







I think that we could use a famous photograph to illustrate this second punctum; it is

Alex Libek photograph of a terrorist being led by the General Security Forces in the 300

bus-line incident. In this photograph as it was later discovered, the man with the white

shirt was brutally executed (4). Without relating to the moral and political aspects of thephotograph, it certainly fits Barthes's caption of “He is dead and he is going to die ”.

A personal punctum

When I read Barthes description of Studium and Punctum, I did not find them

immediately useful to discovering meaning in photographs until I came across a

photograph from the Maale Akrabim incident of 1954. I would like to describe this event

in detail, as it is relevant to exploration of personal and national traumas. On 17 March,1954, while returning from Eilat, an Egged bus was ambushed in Maale Akrabim. After

the first volley of bullets the perpetrators entered the bus and continued their shooting

killing eleven of the passengers. The gruesome photographs of the massacre were

distributed by the Israeli government worldwide after the event. They are now part of

the National Photo Collection and are available online at http://www.gpo.gov.il/.

Fig 2a-b Fritz Cohen the massacre in Maale Akrabim, March 17-18 1954

What we know now is that these photographs have been staged. After the attack the

bodies were moved to Beer Sheba Hospital and only later were returned to the original

location in Maale Akrabim. They were placed inside and outside the bus in order to

recreate the chilling scene. A convincing proof is that the photographs were taken at

night while the attack had happened during the day. The bodies were removed during

that afternoon as can be seen in the following photograph of the bus after the attack.

http://www.gpo.gov.il/

http://www.gpo.gov.il/



Fig. 3 Bus after the attack in Maale Akrabim 1954

Yael Gvirtz in her moving article in Yediot Aharonot (5), has commented on the ethical

and political implications of the photographs from Maale Akrabim. I think that beside the

immediate motivation for creating them, they are now acting as an iconic description of

a pogrom and as such their chilling affect has not been dulled through the years. They

also act as a comment on the truth value of photographs, challenging our natural habit

of assuming that photographs represent ‘facts’ or ‘objective truths’.

The photograph I wanted to relate to was taken prior to the attack. There are no

specific details on who took the photograph or how it was printed after the massacre:

Fig. 4 Unknown photographer passangers in front of the Maale Akrabim bus 1954

The photograph shows the passengers of the bus before the attack during a break in

their trip. The little girl in the photograph is Miri Furstenberg, who was five years oldand is the only living survivor of the attack. When I noticed her holding the hand of the

soldier that may have saved her life, I was engulfed by a tide of emotions and the tears



were running down my face. Here for the first time, I experienced a personal punctum

and could relate emotionally to Barthes's description of it.

While working on this article, I thought that it would be interesting to photograph Miri

Furstenberg today, since I had the intuition that our meeting could add something to myexploration of the subject. This is a photograph from this session:

Fig. 5 Shlomo Lee Abrahmov Miri Furstenberg hands with the Maale Akrabim Photograph 5

December 2007

During the photo session Miri told me the shocking details of the attack, how a soldier

next to her told her to shut up or she will be killed as well. How he shielded her with his

body and how she felt his blood on her after he was shot. Silence in the bus after the

shooting. Her brother Haimka, also survives the shooting and shouts her name, looking

for her. The attackers heard him too. They re-enter the bus and shoot him in the head.

He remained barely conscious for the next 32 years. Later Miri is alone in the bushugging and caressing her dead father and looking outside of the bus and seeing her

mother lying naked and mutilated. This awful sight seen by five years old Miri, was

recreated and it exists as a photograph in Israel's National Photo Collection (code D275-

087). It was described by Yael Gvirtz:

רק ככה אני פוגשת אותה.באותה תנוחה קפואה,חנה, שנה שוכבת הדודה שלי50כבר

שלי המחשב מסך האוטובוס.מעל גלגל גבה ליד חצאיתה,רגליה פשוקות.שרועה על

.שערה הכהה והארוך פרוש על החול.מנוקדת בדםהפרחונית מופשלת וחולצתה הבהירה

ידיה פשוטות בחוסר.עיניה עצומות וסביב פיה ואפה נחילים של דם קרוש,פניה גלויות



גבה האצבע שעליה ענדה את טבעת הנישואין,ידה הימנית מליאה בדם.אונים מאחורי

.שלה חסרה

For 50 years now my aunt Hanna lies in the same frozen pose. Only thus do

I meet her on my computer screen. She is sprawled on her back her legs are

spread, her flower- patterned skirt is lifted and her white blouse spotted with blood. Her dark and long hair is flowing on the sand. Her face is visible, her

eyes closed and around her mouse and nose, streams of dried blood. Her

hands are helplessly stretched behind her back. Her right hand is covered

with blood. The finger on which she wore her wedding ring is missing.

Observing this photograph now, one cannot but think about its duality of meanings. The

first is of course the horrifying incident which it portrays; the second is the deliberate actof recreating the scene. its fractured authenticity.

Photographs of Trauma

Susan Sontag, in her book ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’ (6), argued that photographs

of trauma are limited in their ability to convey the scope of their events for the viewers.

As such, our ability to absorb their impact is limited. Yet there is something in us that

wishes to see them and in certain instances they transfix our innermost beings. Such

are the photographs from the prison of Tuol Sleng in Cambodia, where the Khmer

Rouge executed thousands of innocent victims (7).

Fig. 6a-b Two unidentified prisoners, Tuol Sleng S-21 Prison Cambodia 1975-79

In the two photographs above we can observe Barthes’s two punctums. In the first

photograph it is the chain choking its victim without mercy. In the second, it is the safety

pin looped through the skin of the boy which hints at his upcoming demise. Both of



these photographs relate to Barthes's second punctum since we know that they were

taken prior to the torture and killing of these young victims. For me there is something

haunting in these portraits. There is a certain silence and dignity, an absurd aesthetics

which contradict their harrowing contexts. They gaze at us and in a way demand

answers. They portray the ultimate presence of absence. A cruel void which is physicalbut also spiritual. As I look at them, I think that they symbolize the profound ability of

mankind to create evil, which cannot be explained or excused.

I was thinking that portraits can tell us something about the inner experiences of their

subjects and thought about my friend Eyal who survived the rocket attack in Kfar Giladi

during the Second Lebanon War. While telling me about the attack, he was

unemotional, keeping his composure. I tried to capture his unguarded moments whenthe camera can capture what the eye can barely discern.

Fig. 7 Shlomo Lee Abrahmov Eyal 19 November 2007

Looking at this photograph, I think that it could metaphorically relate to Eyal’s friends

that were right next to him and are no longer with us. As if the photograph reveals his

inner experience of the event, one that would not show in his ordinary daily poses.

Illustrating battlefields traumas is almost an impossible task. The immediate aftermath

of fierce battles with the wounded and the dead lying around is a sight that we would

rather avoid. Such scenes can remind us of the futility of war, its end results and the

indignity of the dead. A noted example is Alexander Gardner stereo photograph from

the battle of Gettysburg (8).



Fig. 8 Alexander Gardner Gettysburg Slaughter Pen July 1863

Coming to terms with the traumas of the Yum Kippur war of 1973, is an on-going

national undertaking in Israel. When it comes to the desperate fighting in Sinai, we are

in a bind. On the one hand we want to share in what has been, or what has been seen,

on the other, graphic scenes such as Gardner's are too painful for us to observe. In this

regard Abraham Vered's photograph from the Chinese Farm in Sinai is remarkable. Its

wide perspective and the hill on the horizon that acts as a focal point, aid in de-

emphasizing the dead soldiers lying on the sand. Two pairs of army boots which

remain uncovered act as a punctum, as the final demarcation between the dead and the

living. There is stillness in this photograph, a gap which is in contrast to the actual

sounds of battle heard while this photograph was taken (9). The vast empty spaces in

the photograph metaphorically relate to the emptiness which remains after the battle

when the survivors have to come to terms with their fallen friends. As if, we as viewers

are also asked by the photograph to untangle this emptiness, to fill this unsettling gap.



Fig. 9 Avraham Vered Chinese Farm Battlefield in Yom Kippur War 1973

As far as photography and trauma, photographs reveal and signify but in the same time

they also represent something unfathomable, something beyond our grasp, a lingeringtrail of smoke that evaporated, yet its remains are buried within us. In that sense the

photographs disclose but also obscure. Their indexicality or factuality should leave

nothing unexplained, however in this case (trauma) there is this elusive quality. It has to

do with the challenge they pose for us. If we refer to the idea of photographic meaning

resultant of a continuous interplay between the referent the photograph and the viewer,

we might get at the source of this challenge for us in viewing photographs of trauma. It

seems that they produce an inner conflict. From one perspective we are graphicallyreminded of the harrowing events of their origin, from another we are removed from

them by not been able to reach them, to fully grasp the multi-dimensional emotional

impact leading to their creation. This inner conflict might be illustrated by the portrait of

the mother of the kidnapped soldier Omar during a demonstration in front of Tel Aviv

Museum of Art. At the time when the photograph was taken, it was not known yet that

the kidnapped soldiers were already dead. In a way the photograph asks the question

of what is expressed externally and what is actually felt internally. We can observe the

external manifestation in the mother's face, but we have difficulty to fully encompass the

internal turmoil or anguish.



Fig. 10 Shlomo Lee Abrahmov Hudra Savayed-Mother of Kidnapped Soldier Omar Tel Aviv December 2000

Naturally many photographs of trauma have an immediate political dimension to them.

My aim in this essay is to point out that they also contain highly individual aspects.

Maybe this is what makes them special and non-unary. Unlike ordinary press

photographs they produce this dichotomy of meaning – one which is clear and

understood in its social and political significance, the other is an individually created

meaning, one which is much more elusive and intangible. It acts like a question that

could be answered and not answered in the same time.

While researching this article, it occurred to me that trauma is part of our common

shared experience in Israel, as if it is part of our DNA. It is around us, whether we are

its victims, direct witnesses or remote observers. It is a vastly challenging question of

how it shapes us socially, culturally and individually. Photographs of trauma can act as

markers of what we need to transcend or debaters of if such transcendence is even

possible (10). They contain a duality in their meaning, as they are always connecting us

to a void, to questions that can only be insufficiently answered. The reaching and un-

reaching, the closeness and the remoteness, the grasping and the un-grasping, this

inconclusiveness is their noeme , their sound of silence.

References/Notes

(1) Barthes, R. (1981) Camera Lucida New York: Hill and Wang



(2) For comments on Barthes’s punctum see: Fried, M. (2005) Barthes's Punctum Critical

Inquiry vol. 31 (3) pp. 539-574

(3) When we watch Lewis Payne photograph in Camera Lucida, we assume that the

photograph was taken just prior to his execution, but it was taken three months prior to the

hanging, making it less urgent then firstly observed.

(4) On the political implications of this photograph see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kav_300_affair

(5) Yael Gvirtz (2004) The Truth that I Am Looking for is Buried Up the Road, Shavuot Holiday

Supplement Yediot Aharonot 25 May

(6) Sontag S, (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux York)

(7) The photographs are from the collection of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, for more

photographs see: http://www.tuolsleng.com/photographs.php

(8) This is the same area where Gardner photographed his famous sharpshooter photographs,

in which he arranged the scene in order to create an improved composition. It brings to mind

the staged photographs from Maale Akrabim.

(9) On Abraham Vered commentary on this photograph see Bamahane IDF Magazine, Issue

39, 7 October 2008 p. 36. Image copyrights are of the IDF Archives and the Bamahane IDF

Magazine.

(10) As Miri Furstenberg commented: "We cannot be healed from it (trauma) but we can choose

life".

I would like to extend here my thanks to Yael Gvirtz for her generous help and for MiriFurstenberg for her courage and moving narrative.

Published:

History and Theory, Protocols No. 11, Bezalel 2008

Link:

http://bezalel.secured.co.il/zope/home/1227877517/1228899371_en?curr_issue=1227877517



http://www.tuolsleng.com/photographs.php

http://www.tuolsleng.com/photographs.php


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