\n
Elena Siemens | University of Alberta<\/p>\n
Introduction:
\nBlue Door Havana<\/h4>\n
It is a rainy morning in Havana. My fellow tourists dissipate, each in search of their own treasure. The setting is the complete opposite of our pristine sea-side resort in Varadero. An old cathedral is under reconstruction with scaffolding and various construction equipment. I photograph a pretty square just outside the cathedral, capturing the wet trees and the wet pavement. Three old men in straw hats are playing folk songs. The building next to them has a set of tall bright-blue doors. In On Photography<\/em>, Susan Sontag writes about \u201cthe beauty of the cracked peeling door\u201d and how it appeals to the Western viewer, who appreciates \u201cthe picturesqueness of disorder\u201d (362). Sontag contrasts this sensibility with that of Communist China, where photography was required to embellish reality.<\/p>\n I take no side in this divide, or rather, as a native Russian, I can relate to both. The blue doors in Havana attract me for a different reason. They remind me of a remarkable show staged in a doorway that I once saw in Moscow. Cuba, it appears, follows its own path, entirely different from either China or Russia. Capturing the revolution in Cuba, Alberto Korda employed \u201cthe same ideas and techniques as in fashion photography,\u201d Jaime Sarusky writes in his introduction to Korda\u2019s book of photographs (12). Korda\u2019s hero was the photographer Raul Corrales, who as a teenager devoured glossy foreign magazines, \u201cwhose photos made his imagination soar\u201d (5). At the Havana airport, waiting for my flight back to Canada, I leaf through pictures by Korda and Corrales, in which Cuba\u2019s capital resembles a glamorous movie set: tropical nature, the sea, and handsome rebels in black berets marching on the old regime. In the 1930s Moscow, the revolutionary director Vsevolod Meyerhold hoped to construct a new theatre with a stage shaped like a catwalk. He was not able to realize his dream; palm trees do not grow in Russia.<\/p>\n In his essay \u201cShock-Photos\u201d \u2013 the inspiration behind this collection of texts and images \u2013 Roland Barthes observes that \u201cit is not enough for the photographer to signify the horrible for us to experience it\u201d (71). Discussing the Shock-Photos exhibit at the Galerie d\u2019Orsay in Paris, Barthes writes that most of the exhibited pictures failed to produce the desired effect. The photographer, he explains, \u201calmost always overconstructed<\/em> the horror he is proposing, adding to the fact<\/em>, by contrasts and parallels, the intentional language<\/em> of horror\u201d (Barthes 71). Barthes cites several examples of this, including a picture which \u201cplaces side by side a crowd of soldiers and a field of skulls\u201d (Barthes 71). Another photograph depicts \u201ca column of prisoners passing a flock of sheep\u201d (Barthes 71). These \u201call too skillful\u201d photographs, Barthes argues, take away an opportunity to reflect and judge, leaving the viewer with nothing but \u201ca simple right of intellectual acquiescence\u201d (71).<\/p>\n Barthes singles out a selection of news-agency photos, also displayed at the exhibit, in which \u201cthe fact, surprised, explodes in all of its stubbornness, its literality, in the very obviousness of its obtuse nature\u201d (73). These news-agency shots depicting \u201cthe executed Guatemalans,\u201d or \u201cthe policeman\u2019s raised truncheon,\u201d Barthes points out, are \u201cvisually diminished, dispossessed of that numen<\/em> which the painters would not have failed to add to them\u201d (73). The \u201cnaturalness<\/em> of these images,\u201d Barthes continues, \u201ccompels the spectator to a violent interrogation\u201d (73). The viewers must themselves elaborate on the picture and place their own judgment \u2013 \u201cwithout being encumbered by the demiurgic presence of the photographer\u201d (Barthes 73). According to Barthes, these \u201cvisibly diminished\u201d news-agency shots exhibit \u201cthat critical catharsis Brecht demands,\u201d rather than \u201can emotive purgation,\u201d characteristic of painting (73). \u201cThe literal photograph,\u201d Barthes concludes his essay, \u201cintroduces us to the scandal of horror, not to horror itself\u201d (73). In what follows, the reader will find a selection of provocative essays dealing with both the \u201coverconstructed\u201d and \u201cliteral\u201d representation of disturbing events. Alluding to Barthes and other influential thinkers, the essays explore diverse examples of \u201cscandals of horror\u201d \u2013 shocking images in film and photography drawn from a variety of historical eras and geographical locations from Bombay to Moscow to Rwanda.<\/p>\n Barthes, Rolland.\u00a0 \u201cShock-Photos.\u201d\u00a0 The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies<\/em>.\u00a0 New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.<\/p>\n Sarusky, Jamie.\u00a0 \u201cRaul Corales.\u201d\u00a0 Ed. Carlos Torres Cairo, Raul Corales: La Imagen Y <\/em>La Historia<\/em>, Florence: Aediciones Aurelia, 1996.<\/p>\n Sarusky, Jamie.\u00a0 \u201cKorda.\u201d\u00a0 Ed. Carlos Torres Cairo, Alberto Korda: Diario de una Revolucion<\/em>, Florence: Aediciones Aurelia, 1996.<\/p>\n Sontag, Susan.\u00a0 \u201cImage-World.\u201d\u00a0 A Susan Sontag Reader<\/em>.\u00a0 New York: Vintage Books, 1983.<\/p>\n This article is licensed under a \u00a0Creative Commons 3.0 License<\/a> although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed, or the author has exercised their right to fair dealing\u00a0under the\u00a0Canadian Copyright Act<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Siemens_cuba-02-696x1024.jpg\" "\\"Siemens_cuba-02\\"")
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<\/a><\/p>\nWorks Cited<\/h4>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imaginations.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/88x31-1.png\" "\\"88x31")
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