In “Torture as Pornography” (The Guardian, May 7, 2004), Joanna Bourke wrote of the Abu Ghraib photographs documenting prisoner sexual abuse:
This festival of violence is highly pornographic. The victims have been reduced to exhibitionist objects or anonymous “meat”. They either wear hoods, or are beheaded by the camera. The people taking the photographs exult in the genitals of their victims. There is no moral confusion here: the photographers don’t even seem aware that they are recording a war crime. There is no suggestion that they are documenting anything particularly morally skewed. For the person behind the camera, the aesthetic of pornography protects them from blame.
Here are two images to consider alongside Bourke’s statement:
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What do you think of Bourke’s claim that “For the person behind the camera, the aesthetic of pornography protects them from blame”?