“Memo”, a reference to the Bybee memorandum, explores the issue of aesthetics and politics, and in particular the representation of human suffering through the photographic medium. Should such images be aestheticized, and for what purpose? The images from Abu Ghraib prison were originally used as weapons to humiliate, and to prolong the suffering of the individuals depicted in them, a suffering that was further exasperated through the Medias reprinting. By taking the iconic photograph from Abu Ghraib, the image that signifies all the suffering that occurred there, “Memo” aims to cease this continued anguish, by transforming the images purpose, from documentation of torture, to an art object and a thing of beauty.
The photograph is re-enacted, and aestheticized in order to draw away from the suffering depicted in the original image, and instead towards the form and aesthetic quality of the art object itself. The work echoes a school of religious painting in its subjects Christ like pose, a factor which made the original image so iconic when it was released. These religious connotations help to reinforce the idea of an almost sacred art object, an attitude normally reserved for oil paintings, rather than reproducible photographs. The final transformation occurs within the display of the work. Here we see the image re-appropriated into a gallery space, removed from its original context of newspaper pages and television screens, and more importantly, isolated from the stories of torture and suffering that would normally accompany it. Devoid of these accompanying devices, and through use of framing and lighting, the image takes on a new almost painterly quality, removed from its original stigma and transformed into an object of beauty and near religious reverence.
The photograph is re-
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Memo
