Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media

Taking its cue from an exhibition of lynching photographs produced in 19th and 20th century America, this article explores the issue of how death is imaged in contemporary media accounts of atrocity. Drawing on examples from Israel‐Palestine, Sierra Leone, South Africa and the Sudan, this article highlights the importance of social context in the construction of pictorial meaning. It argues against conventional views that see the media as replete with images of death and thereby contributing to a diminution in the power of photography to provoke. Instead, this article maintains that the intersection of three economies (the economy of indifference to others, the economy of “taste and decency” whereby the media itself regulates the representation of death and atrocity, and the economy of display governing the details of an image’s production) means we have witnessed a disappearance of the dead in contemporary coverage which restricts the possibility for an ethical politics exercising responsibility in the face of crimes against humanity.