Enrico De Angelis introduces in The Controversial Archive: Negotiating Horror Images in Syria the definition of Orphan Images, which are images that have no background information. There is a lack of context regarding where, when and who took the picture. These pictures portray the raw reality of the revolution in the Middle East, more specifically in Syria. Scenes of violence are captured is a picture, which will forever represent the atrocities that the government does not want the entire world to know about.
They are orphan images, images that, in the words of the photographer Muzaffar Salman, ‘do not have a father, a mother, or a story, or a background, nothing’.
De Angelis, 72.
The images are taken by freelance, also known as citizen journalists. These people risk their lives to report what is going on in Syria. Their purpose is to let the world see what is happening, with the hope that those images will trigger a reaction, encourage to take action. The images are uploaded on a network called Smart News, which guarantees the anonymity of who took and uploaded them. Thanks to the network, the pictures can circulate and reach the attention of a large number of people. The images are extremely hard to watch, they show dead bodies in the streets, children killed in chemical attacks and mass destruction. These raw images are necessary to create empathy, and receive some sort of help.
De Angelis analyzes the different reactions that a viewer can feel when looking at these pictures. He underlines that the reactions can be different according to one’s past experiences, current life conditions and psychological state, “Even during the same day, some Syrian photographers point out, there are moments you feel you can look at the horror and others when you just cannot.”
The questions that are raised are: Who owns these images? Who is entitled to keep them? Why is Youtube entitled to delete certain orphan images?
In 2018 Youtube deleted 33 million videos of “terrorist propaganda“, and also the Network that showed the Orphan Images. The reason why Youtube does this is because it cannot allow that kind of content on its platform, but then, isn’t it destroying the effort of those citizen journalists that risked their lives to take those pictures? Yes, in this case Youtube does more harm than good by eliminating those videos and images, because it automatically deletes historical evidence that could be take to the process again Syria.
This connects also to a topic that Sardine fight for: immigration. Many images of the dead bodies on the coasts of countries like Greece, Turkey or Italy are rarely shown. Because they would hurt someone’s sensibility, the tend to be obscured. But wouldn’t they be beneficial for making people do something about it? Yes they would be, and it was proven when the pictures of a toddler’s dead body on the coast of Greece circulated, it created a lot of shock.
Sardine are against Salvini’s anti-immigrant language, and pictures like this reinforce the figure of Sardine, because they are fighting to make scenes like this never happen again. On the other hand, regular people find this picture disturbing, because it shows a dead toddler. Pictures like this are necessary to make people understand what is happening right on our coasts. The fact that they find it disturbing does not necessarily mean that they will do something, because such as in Syria, the pictures circulated by nothing really happened afterward.
The movie “The Uprising” does an excellent job in demonstrating how ordinary people take the risk and record footage or shoot pictures of violence during the Uprising in the Middle East. Those who risk their lives to report are normal people who do not have any skills, they just want to provide evidence that they experience in first hand, hoping that they will receive help.
Sardine 