When an Image-Hungry World Wants to be Fed

Osama bin Laden and Hillary Clinton: Two photographs have caused an uproar in the United States, but the question remains: Why does the world put so much faith in pictures?

What’s going on? Two pictures have supposedly caused an uproar in the United States. First is the picture — or perhaps several pictures — of the probably mutilated corpse of Osama bin Laden. That picture — or these pictures — apparently will not be made public for now on President Obama’s orders.

Then there’s a photo in the White House Situation Room that has already circumnavigated the globe, taken during the live broadcast of the military strike against bin Laden. That one shows, among others, the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the secretary of defense, the vice-president, the deputy national security adviser and a brigadier general.

The striking thing about this photo, a picture that appeared in virtually every online publication and daily newspaper in the world almost as soon as it was taken, isn’t just the fact that there’s only one woman in a room full of men. They’re all rigidly staring at a monitor out of camera range on which live video of the storming of bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan is being shown. The remarkable thing about this photo is that Hillary Clinton is the only one showing any emotion.

While the men all stare more or less tensely at the monitor, the secretary of state appears to be scared stiff. She holds one hand over her mouth as if she’s overwhelmed by the images on the screen, fearful of following the unfolding events.

This photo is now causing trouble for the White House team. The supposed “weak impression” made by Hillary Clinton doesn’t fit the image of the strong, capable secretary of state the administration wants to project to the world. And it certainly doesn’t fit the image of the focused, proactive president she wanted to be in place of Obama.

The most intensive 38 minutes of her life

According to what one hears, Hillary Clinton is angry about the picture because of the mood it conveys. She is angry enough to issue a statement about it: While they may have been “38 of the most intense minutes,” she said of the raid, she added, “I have no idea what any of us were looking at that particular millisecond when the picture was taken.” She speculated that she may have been suppressing a cough or sneeze at that moment.

Why not release the photos?

Heads of state and government ministers always want to appear fully functional, calm and always in control because the iconography of power considers a poker face to be the only permissible image of sovereignty.

But that’s debatable. Isn’t the image of Clinton reacting as a human being to a moving scene much more moving than those expressionless figures apparently phased by nothing? Isn’t the stoicism of the men not chilling in comparison? No one considers Mrs. Clinton to be weak because she is emotionally touched by the developments playing out on the monitor. Reacting as a human being certainly doesn’t mean she is weak or that she lacks confidence.

This is the language of power images: Rulers don’t cry and they’re never afraid, even when they really are.

But why the necessity of issuing a presidential order against releasing photographs of a terrorist leader “brought to justice?” Why did Obama pointedly oppose his anti-terror advisers and CIA chief who recommended immediate release of the photographs?

That’s also open to debate. On one hand, there’s the plausible argument that release of the pictures might pose a national security threat. Depictions of the violence could provoke acts of revenge among bin Laden’s followers and those people should not be unnecessarily provoked.

On the other hand, it’s clear that the world is waiting for the pictures of bin Laden’s corpse. Nothing short of a photograph will suffice as proof that he’s really dead. Everything else might just be propaganda, choreography or theatrical scenery rearranged by the stagehands.

The presidential order to withhold such photos for now is essential. It’s also essential to avoid the impression that a display of the body be seen as showing what President Obama calls “trophy” pictures, i.e., like the ancient ritual of putting the heads of those executed on pikes for public display just to demonstrate one’s own power. Or like hunters who lay out their game for the cameras.

Basic distrust of doctored photographs

So it’s said that Obama doesn’t want to celebrate via picture — although in this particular case, an image-hungry world demands it be fed pictures. The danger for Obama right now is that the world starts to believe that, in the absence of photographic evidence, the nighttime raid was all just a story concocted for propaganda purposes. Conversely, release of the photos could also be considered a form of propaganda against the enemy; the United States, after all, is still engaged in fighting terror.

If one superimposes these two images on one another, the supposedly negative picture of Hillary Clinton along with the missing photo of bin Laden’s corpse, then totally new questions arise: Why does the world believe so strongly in pictures? Why do people cling so tenaciously to the reality of images when they know how easily photos can be staged? That they can easily be manipulated, edited and put together from several different unrelated pictures? That they can even be created out of whole cloth on a computer? Pictures prove nothing and clarify nothing because they inherently carry with them a basic element of doubt about their authenticity that remains with them forever.

So if showing photographs is propaganda and not showing them is also propaganda, then the fact that a picture is just an image is also propaganda. Believe that. The technical advice that best applies here is “Don’t trust any pictures that you haven’t Photoshopped yourself.”