SUSIE LINFIELD: “An Excerpt from ‘The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence’” (2010)

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SUSIE LINFIELD: An Excerpt from ‘The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence’ (2010)

Eddie Adams, Saigon Execution, Vietnam, 1968
A Little History of Photography Criticism; or, Why Do Photography Critics Hate Photography?

(An excerpt from The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence)

By Susie Linfield

In 1846, Charles

via AMERICAN SUBURB X: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2012/02/susie-linfield-excerpt-from-cruel.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americansuburb+%28ASX+%7C+AMERICAN+SUBURB+X+%7C+Photography+%26+Culture%29

These moments are in reality utterly discontinuous with normal time.… But the reader who has been arrested by the photograph may tend to feel this discontinuity as his own personal moral inadequacy. And as soon as this happens even his sense of shock is dispersed: his own moral inadequacy may now shock him as much as the crimes being committed in the war.… The issue of the war which has caused that moment is effectively depoliticised.

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