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... organization. The dismay of images is when we are shown that the man and the crowd are themselves surrounded by photographers, whose participation helps determine the direction the event will take. (=-=Kleinman and Kleinman 1997-=-, 9). Such a perspective not only implicates the journalists who surround the event but also the onlookers, who sit comfortably in their homes reading the newspaper or watching the television, safely ...

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...d of painters, collectors, critics, and curators, so photographs get their meaning from the way the people involved with them understand them, use them, and thereby attribute meaning to them. (Howard =-=Becker 1995-=-). Seeing Images of Suffering Images have power. They have the power to spur action and silence debate. The power they wield can wring tears from our eyes and force us to turn away in shock. If the ap...

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...oves toward what is most familiar in relation to what is seen. In the second instance, the viewer essentially puts the image into a separate or new category because he or she cannot make sense of it (=-=Foucault 1983-=-). The later possibility has been effectively closed off as an option to viewers of suffering. The attempt, both on the part of news agencies and humanitarian groups, has been to universalize sufferin...

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...e “Other.” Studies of Western portrayals of Africa form one major arena within African Studies and also throughout the related disciplines of literary criticism, postcolonial studies and history (cf. =-=Pieterse 1992-=-). Nevertheless, very few studies engage the act of seeing suffering or what Arthur and Joan Kleinman have termed “the appeal of experience and the dismay of images.” The appeal of experience is when ...

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...ld responsibility for the killings, the inaction of the West in the face of genocide, and finally the nature of humanitarianism as a tool for international policy (Karnik forthcoming). As Leigh Star (=-=Star 1991-=-) has argued leaving agents who do not appear in the picture but whose actions or inactions can be discerned is tantamount to simply reifying existing power structures. These actors remain squarely ou...

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...tary photography for being insufficiently critical, particularly of its own practice, and to move towards work which is more self-reflexive, and based on an interrogation of signs and representation (=-=Stallabrass 1997-=-, 135). While many scholars and even photojournalists themselves have criticized photojournalism (Hagaman 1996) for many of the reasons that Stallabrass cites, interrogating photographs as signs is on...

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...no means want to criticize DWB for their decision. The institutional debates will likely continue within the organization over what must have been the worst possible scenario for those eager to help (=-=Fox 1995-=-). What I want to emphasize here is that this picture has the potential to open these debates as well as many others such as the international forces which acted to produce conditions in Rwanda conduc...

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...ch is more self-reflexive, and based on an interrogation of signs and representation (Stallabrass 1997, 135). While many scholars and even photojournalists themselves have criticized photojournalism (=-=Hagaman 1996-=-) for many of the reasons that Stallabrass cites, interrogating photographs as signs is one entry point to a wider discussion of their effects and meanings. In this respect, I follow Michel Foucault’s...

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... of international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in removing social and economic safety nets in Rwanda which further exacerbated an already volatile situation (=-=Chossudovsky 1996-=-). Reflecting on the connectedness of the world and politics of international finance in this example could allow viewers to see the ways that they are implicated in a situation far away. Why do Mexic...