THE IMAGE AND THE WITNESS

The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture is a timely interdisciplinary collection of original essays concerning the ethical stakes of the image in our visually-saturated age. It explores the role of the material image in bearing witness to historical events and the visual representation of witnesses to collective trauma. In arguing for the agency of the image, this unique collection debates post-traumatic memory, documentary ethics, embodied vision, and the recycling of images. It discusses works by Chris Marker, Errol Morris, Derek Jarman, Doris Salcedo, Gerhard Richter, and Boris Mikhailov, along with images from popular culture, including websites and home movies. Films discussed include Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Blue (1993) and Level 5 (1996).

January 2007
256 pages

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Frances Guerin is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Kent, and the author of A Culture of Light (2005).

Roger Hallas is Assistant Professor of English at Syracuse University.

‘This book is a must: fiercely but serenely engaged with the escalation of both skepticism and panic around imagemaking across our scarred and fragmented planetary community, this collective reflection on visual witnessing is a shot in the arm for our collective thinking about the documentary image, inside or outside the academy.'
– Thomas Waugh, Concordia University

'This is an important collection for anyone interested in how images shape the way we remember traumatic events … I have no doubt that many courses will be designed around this provocative book.’
– Randolph Lewis, University of Oklahoma

'An intense debate over the power and impact of images has gained momentum over the last decades with varying degrees of scepticism about the value of visual media in taking on the subject of human suffering. The best of the essays in the text confirm that bearing witness is an active responsibility not a passive spectatorship.'
– Kathleen MacQueen, The Art Book