A Picture- Worth a (Thousand Of Your Own) Words

This first picture is a photo of the human pyramid of torture in combination with a loving couple posing happily for the camera :(

The movie Standard Operating Procedure was an interesting visual of the scattered yet connected events that occured at Abu Ghraib. I felt like the photos displayed an array of violence and abuse that the military officials imposed on the prisoners of Abu Ghraib. There was obviously an array of terrible things that were happening to innocent people and you could tell from the photographs that were highlighted in the movie. For example there was a photograph of one of the military officialsstanding over a prisoner with a strap that symbolized a dog leash around the prisoners neck. It was obvious to me that the prisoner was being totured and ridiculed through this photo. However, what I took from the photo could be something completely different from what another audience members perception was. This is why the way the photo was presented in this movie was so interesting. Initially the photos were displayed while the accused military members gave their account of the event. At this point it was hard to imagine what went on at the prison. Further along in the movie, the director began to show segments of reinactments of the accused military peoples account of specific events that happened in and around the photos. I thought this was a way to give a specific perspective of the events in the photo. This was a combination of the director, actors, and personal accounts of the accused military person.Therefore, the way the movie displayed the photos was very objective. There was not much left for the audience members to come up with or imagine based ont he photos. It was very possible that the way the photo was reinacted could have been completely off incomparison to what actually occured.

The effects of the white fram and black background in my opinion was to force the picture to be the main focus to the audience. the photos were taken in a prison so they were pretty drabt o begin with, the white borders really made the picture pop out of the screen and the black background eliminated any other distractions that you would get in a movie where a picture is displayed.

Morris makes an interesting argument about the photos of torture in relation to the other photographs basically stating that they were staged like any other photo. People were posing and although they were comitting crimes they remained oblivious to that fact and focused ont he idea of just being in the picture. There were photos with thumbs up and military personel smiling and hugging while there was a pile of foreign bodies piled ont op of one another. This was really an interesting and disturbing site to see. The worst part was that a photo of torture was intermingled with photos of everyday likfe for the military people. Proving the context and the mindset of these accused military people, they disconnected from the crime they were committing and continued living and posing for the camera as if they were at an amusement parka nd everything was completely normal. this was rather disturbing yet im sure they had to learn to compartmentalize work and just maintaining their sanity.

www.opendemocracy.net (picture courtesy of)