W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #abughraib, #somalia, #torture, #stoning, #sabrinaharman, #farahabdiwarsameh,  

This is one of the most well known photographs made after September 11th 2001.  Who made it?.  The name Sabrina Harman probably doesn’t ring any bells,  How about Army Specialist Sabrina Harman?  She was the photographer, but she didn’t win any Pulitzers or World Press Awards bu rather the enmity of the shocked free world.  

In April 2004 CBS News broadcast images of human rights violations and war crimes (physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, even murder, committed by US soldiers and the CIA taking place in the Abu Grahib prison in Iraq.  

These were shocking and outrageous.  Unacceptable.  

There is a grim image from Somalia by a photographer named Farah Abdi Warsameh, part of a series that he received World Press Photo recognition for in 2010.  The sequence shows a man, Mohamed Abukar Ibrahim, who was found guilty of adultery and sentenced to be stoned to death.  We see before and after.  The before images seem the more chilling because the mans fate has not been consummated, he is eerily still.  It’s like a photograph by Samuel Beckett of an ultimate existential moment.  We see the crowds gathered around him, but he is the focus.   

It is surprising — at least to me —that news services didn’t crop the image like the Abu Grahib photograph.  That image there has been “fixed” by some photo editor de-contextualizing it and leaving us with a saint-like figure, balancing precariously on a block, arms extended vulnerably.  The hood and schamata make the prisoner look like a participant in a nineteenth century Spanish Easter procession.  We have, in fact, been set up.  


Here is the original.   It’s looser and candid, and messier. 

Imagine the image from Somalia given the same treatment.  Our not knowing exactly what is going on but having the sense that something truly horrible is about to take place weighs in the air.  The man’s almost passive expression and odd gesture with his hand make this more memorable possibly.  Also that the event took place in Africa and not with US troops kept it off the front page.

It does make for a compelling experiment. 

©2021

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