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UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

Photography & International Conflict

This research project forms the core of an interdisciplinary, transnational collaboration between scholars in the fields of visual culture and international relations, practitioners in photography and visual media, and NGO actors in fields of human rights and international conflict.  It examines the roles of image producers and the functions of photographic imagery in the documentation and communication of wars, violent conflicts and human rights issues.  The ideological tenets of humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism, in particular their ethical imperatives regarding the pain and suffering of others, have long historical associations with traditions of documentary image-making.  This project will review these histories, analyse the ideological impulses and functions of contemporary modes of photographic documentation, and establish a comparative framework to identify distinctive features of global photographic traditions and practices.  In developing this framework it will pursue original research on the roles of photography in documenting conflict and its aftermath in Northern Ireland.

The project will have two broad, interrelated strands.

• (1) Histories and Theories – this strand examines the ways in which international conflict has been mediated by global photographies, and pays particular attention to the colonial and postcolonial contexts of photographic production: it examines the role of humanitarian and cosmopolitan frameworks in ‘Western’ genres of documentary photography, and key ideas (universalism, empathy and compassion) underpinning these, and considers alternative (geopolitical and biopolitical) frameworks for understanding representations of violent conflict and bodies in pain.
• (2) Practices and policies – examines the political economy of photographic documentation of conflicts, including the work of selected international news organizations and NGOs in the global distribution of images, and the effects of imagery on government policy and NGO activity; this strand also examines the meliorative effects of visual documentation on post-conflict societies, including the use of visual archives in civil and legal inquiries surrounding violent conflicts.