War Photography, the Face, and Small Acts of Senseless Kindness

摘要

This article examines the moral work of war photography — the classic portraits of Don McCullin and also the latter‐day landscapes of Simon Norfolk — probing their moral depths. It focuses on “the face” as Emmanuel Levinas understood it, and argues that the photographers do the same; following Levinas, it makes use of Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate (1980) to adumbrate an ethics of small acts of senseless kindness, in Grossman's phrase. It proposes that such an ethics offers a compelling description of our response (and our responsibility) to others, and a crystalline encapsulation of the war photographer's practice.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2011.574051