This exhibition explores artistic responses to media representations of conflict over the past two decades. It examines how coverage has changed significantly with new technologies allowing images to be shared widely. The proliferation of images from different perspectives challenges the notion of objectively documenting reality. The exhibition aims to present different sides of conflicts without bias, showing the complexity of interpreting images of violence.

1. Image Counter Image
Nikki & Saffron

2. Image Counter Image was an exhibition in Germany running
from 10/06/2012 to 16/09/2012
It looks at artistic interpretations of and reactions to media
representation of violent conflict over the past two decades.
Starting from the first Gulf War (1990-1991) and ending with the
Arab Spring of 2011, the exhibition also includes work from
9/11.
The essay explores how media coverage has changed
significantly in the last two decades and the critical approach to
media images.

3. The title of the exhibition is an indication that the images should
not be viewed separately but in light of other images and their
representations.
‘Intericonicity’ – the icons of the attacks on New York point as
much to other images as they do the reality of the event of which
they are direct evidence.
Another thing implied by the title is the visual arms race idea.
This is the race between media images to get attention, as more
and more images are now being produced and only a select few
are seen and used by the Newspapers etc.

4. Warring countries also fight with imagery, the other side
counters images by publicising even more violent and distressing
photographs.
“In the ‘new wars’ of our own time, warring states communicate
via and with the aid of global media and picture agencies… A
visual arms race has developed in recent years, with ever more
distressing images being used to respond to images of violence
perpetrated by the other side.”
Gerhard Paul
However the more we see of violent images, the more immune
we become to them.

5. Susan Sontag talks about how we chose what to photograph
and what to crop out of the frame. The determining influence is
choosing which conflicts we see, which we pay attention too and
ultimately who’s side we take. Not every conflict is deemed
worthy of pictorial record.
Jasmila Zbanic film
Journalistic agenda which determines what is reported and how/
what is seen as important or unimportant.
Alfredo Jaar Rwanda project

6. “Pictures can shape opinion and provide proof. Their contents
are regarded as real. The viewer has the feeling that he/she has
been there… When there is any contradiction between written
information and pictured information, it is the latter (possibly
after a period of consideration’ that takes precedence.”
Thomas Knieper
Communications scientist

7. Sean Snyder
“The status that is ascribed to media images should also be
subjected to critical scrutiny. Sean Snyder does precisely this … by
investigating the qualitative level on which images make certain
claims… He compared his findings with the accompanying press
captions, written by press officers which – as framing statements
- define what a particular photograph is supposed to show.”

8. The Gulf War
Media images of the First Gulf War were based on a document
that advised units of the United States military to control the
images seen.
Journalists were restricted as to where they could go and what
they could photograph.
It was seen as a clean war because images were shown of
military action but none were shown of the aftermath.

9. Thomas Ruff
Photographic series Nights (1992-96) done in the same style of
images from the Gulf War, which gives them a menacing
atmosphere. But they show how nothing was really revealed by
these images as there are no people in the pictures.

10. ‘a virtual war, a media spectacle that
fundamentally called into question the
relationship between an event as it was depicted
and actual military conflict.’

11. Nin Brudermann
This artist installed 4 video channels to show the idea of the
‘spectacularization of war’. The film shows a full unedited version
of ‘Operation Desert Fox’ taken from every news station. She
wanted to show the long periods of waiting that the news
channels do not show in contrast to the dramatic montages
shown on TV.

12. 9/11
Attacks were witnessed globally, and the public got to ‘witness
violence as it was committed’.
‘The images of 9/11 were inexplicably intertwined with the
images that the attacks produced… the terrorists had selected
highly symbolic targets in locations where there would already
be the highest possible concentration on cameras’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpUKM0MFNaM

13. “One of the most striking features of 9/11 was the relatively small
about of images that were used in news reports. This limited range
was partly to do with the monopoly enjoyed by American
television networks and partly due to the channelling and
selection of visual materials by news agencies.”
This was all made very clear in the work of Hans Peter Feldman

14. Langlands and Bell
http://
www.langlandsandbell.com/the-house-of-osama-bin-lad
Deliberately disappoint the viewer by simply
showing an animation of Osama Bin Laden’s
house. There is no plot and nothing exciting
happens. It is a critique of the sensationalist
nature of the media.

15. As well as the amount of images of 9/11 being shown, the essay
discusses how only successful terrorist attacks publicised.
Photography of conflicts is very restricted as only selected journalists are
allowed to travel to Afghanistan and into military strongholds. Access to
information was monopolised by the military and was very secure.
Trevor Paglen’s project The Other Nights Sky is a direct attack on the
attempts to monopolise imagery by using long exposures to look as
though things are being hidden and kept a secret.

16. Because of the publics limited access to images of war, the ones
that were actually seen had a greater impact. Images could be
leaked once a better understanding of technology developed
which meant more shocking and restricted photographs could
be seen.
The arrival of web 2.0 (social media and mobile phones) has
changed the way that we see images. Any one, anywhere can
take photos and videos of events as they occur. We now get
unedited, nonprofessional, instaneous reporting of images from
a range of different perspectives.
Thomson & Craighead

17. Arab Spring
Where members of the press cannot access an area (banned or
too dangerous) people can record footage or take photos and
put them online. Therefore we have wider access to images.
‘the widespread use of cameras by people around the world has
created more than a mass of images; it has created a new form
of encounter, an encounter between people who take, watch
and show other people’s photographs, with or without their
consent, thus opening new possibilities of political action and
forming new conditions for visibility.’

18. Roy Samaha
“I loaded my analogue camera with a fast black
and white film and started documenting the
events through my computer screen. The Internet
at that period was the event itself.”
http://www.ibraaz.org/projects/34
“This is the ecstasy of communication; this is the
electronic revolution. The 'Invisible Generation' is
everywhere.”

19. “Although these images and videos convey a sense of
authenticity and direction involvement, it is often not
possible to prove that this is the case…. The ‘real’
equals credibility via its sense of unfiltered reality. That
is, ‘authenticity’ arises less from the authenticity of
reality per se than the authenticity of the means by
which reality is portrayed. Truth effects (can) replace
the truth.”

20. http://www.hausderkunst.de/index.php?id=718&L=1
The point of this exhibition is simply to show the
different sides of various conflicts, without resorting to
stereotypes or biased accounts of who is right or
wrong. They simply show what happened, or what is
perceived to have happened.

21. “Their aim is not to create their own reality in these
images, but rather to turn our interaction with the
world – through images – into a more multilayered,
more differentiated process. They avoid coming up with
simple answers to complex questions – exactly as one
would expect of any artistic contribution to this
debate.”