Why we Still Need Pictures

There are good reasons not to show the image of a dead Osama bin Laden; giving up photography because images can be manipulated, however, keeps the viewer unduly naive. The debate is in a precarious situation.

Anyone, who looked in a newspaper on the day after the storming of the house in Abottabad in order to get a visual idea of what happened, had to rub their eyes. On the first page of this newspaper appeared an extremely abstract, fuzzy, orange-brown image. Nothing was recognizable except the words “News Exclusive.” Only by the subtitle could one understand that it was a still from a video recording of the room in which Osama bin Laden had been shot. “A gaping hole is in the wall,” it said. But what caused this hole is still not clear.

What remained in the dark also did not become clearer in another now-famous photo released a few days later. The picture was taken at the same time, 11,000 kilometers away, in a place just as highly explosive. You could see the tense faces of President Obama and his security advisers, while following Operation Geronimo in Abbottabad from the bug-proof Situation Room at the White House. The operation was recorded live on a video camera on the helmet of a soldier and transmitted. As is so often the case, there is also endless speculation about this photo: Is Hillary Clinton’s hand-to-mouth movement a gesture of fear? What are the photos on the table showing? Why isn’t Obama wearing a tie, and who is the girl in the background? Yes, what do the paper coffee cups say about the gathering? But the important thing about the image is that we cannot see what the people in the room see, so we cannot understand what they observe and know.

No Image Could Do this Demand Justice

None of these photos shows the event of the deadly night that the world demands to see. Everything is a big lie, say those who believe that the al-Qaida founder has long since gone underground somewhere else, and therefore there could be no picture of him dead. Others are saying the photo should be published already since it would lead to awareness of what bin Laden really was: not a holy warrior but a poor mass murderer. The Washington Post writes that the picture shows that the terrorist got what he deserved in the end.

But no image of a dead bin Laden could ever satisfy these desires. Everyone knows that photographs in the age of digital editing can be manipulated quickly, easily and almost without a trace. In fact, shortly after the storming of the property in Pakistan, fake pictures of the slain terrorist leader were already circulating the Internet. In reality, it is probably not a question of evidence: That pictures can lie has become a truism.

However, it is possible to use pictures to take revenge on perpetrators as well as avenge the dead — as if they were pictures of shame or sacrifice. The photo of the lousy Saddam Hussein after his capture was such a picture of shame, while terrorists used the torture pictures from Abu Ghraib as videos on the Internet to recruit new members. Obama, in his own words, wanted to prevent either use of the pictures with the ban, which he imposed on the disclosure of the dead image of Bin Laden. In his careful reasoning on May 4, he stated that he would neither show off the pictures as trophies nor allow the visibly violent death in them to serve as a basis for a cult of martyrdom and further violence. One can only agree with him: This image is not what we need.

The Images of the Moon Landing Did not Convince all Either

But even if there are good reasons not to publish the picture of bin Laden dead, the debate has come to a precarious situation. The emphasis, with which the opponents of publishing the pictures point to them as no proof, and that they can even be abused, obscures the fact that of course we need pictures when it comes to events like this.

That pictures can lie does not differentiate them from texts. Everyone knows that written reports are also faked and misused, and yet we probably wouldn’t think to give up a description of such events in Abbottabad. In other words, the naiveté to assume that photographs are considered evidence without a debate almost seems to be the greatest among those who assume faith in others. The photographs of the moon landing, for example, from 1969 have not convinced everyone that it really took place either. On the contrary, they have become the starting point for numerous conspiracy theories. The Science Museum in London has even provided a place in the exhibition for the thesis that the pictures were taken in a studio. Photographs are obviously just like texts, scanned for their authenticity by their consumers. They are part of the coverage, but their significance is not exhausted by the fact that they can be manipulated.

Complete Human Cruelty

Why then do we need pictures? Not to use them as means to either meaningless or lower ends but to better understand the lives of others. We need them purely for intuition — not because we can pursue an immediate direct benefit — no matter how rational the reasons (evidence) or emotionally motivated we are (sensation-seeking, revenge, rape, etc.). This requires not the image of the dead Osama bin Laden but photos that show the circumstances of his existence before the operation with the Navy Seals. Those who thought that the most dangerous man in the world lived like a wild animal in the caves of Tora Bora now see a more or less ordinary two-story villa. Whereas we would have expected temporary camp-like conditions, we learn about a life with women and children, a night in a double bed and self-indulgent evenings in the chair in front of their own video messages in a house that otherwise had no telephone and no Internet. And we realize suddenly that the monster had quite a human cruelty. No less and no more.

Perhaps the most striking image that was published by the defeat of Saddam Hussein did not come from his arrest but from the seizure of his palace in Baghdad in April 2003. We saw heavily armed American soldiers hanging around complacently and with legs apart in the cheap imitation décor of the ostentatious palace. The behavior of the army appeared surprisingly rowdy, and the interior of a powerful tyrant appeared surprisingly cheap. It is the minor details, not the great events that have been set in motion, that matter. Particularly this is exactly why we need the photographic images.