Photography and Memorialization: Washington, D.C.
By Ellen Schatschneider
Department of Anthropology
Cultural Production Faculty
In his classic 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin suggests that, in some instances, the older cult value of the image is retained in photographs of the dead. Memorial practices the world over have deployed photographic images and photographic practices in a great variety of ways. As a cultural anthropologist, I have worked extensively on photographic memorials to fallen soldiers in present-day Japan.
Photography and Pilgrimage
Photographers photograph Fredrick Hart's "Three Soldiers" statue at the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial In Washington D.C. If the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial is a contemporary pilgrimage site, to what extent may the practice of photography be understood as a kind of pilgrimage practice, through which aspects of the visited sacred site are appropriated by pilgrims to take with them on their journeys home?
(Photograph by Ellen Schattschneider)
Reflective Visions
One of the most common photographic sites in the Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial In Washington D.C. is the section of the wall that reflects the Washington Monument.
This vignette seems to juxtapose two profoundly different memorial aesthetic. The Washington Monument's gleaming, alabaster spire evokes a neo-classical, even Olympian, triumphalist sensibility. In contrast, the Vietnam Memorial, made of black marble and sunk in the ground, seems to evoke an older pre-Olympian religion of the earth.
What work is being done by photographers' attempts to capture these two memorial complexes within a single frame?
(Photograph by Ellen Schattschneider)
Photographs and Names
A bamboo structure erected by veterans of a single company to their fallen comrades, near the Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington, D.C. In addition to photographs of the dead men, this structure contains rubbings of the names of the dead men, taken from the adjacent wall.
The structure on the one hand seems to evoke the setting of the war (does it evoke bamboo cages in which American POWs were held captive?) while also partaking of the proximity of the Memorial War.
How are we to understand the relationship between the photographs and the names of the lost in this structure?
(Photograph by Ellen Schattschneider)
Faces of the Fallen
More than 1,300 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen, killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, are memorialized through painted portraits, based on their photographs, in the "Faces of the Fallen" project. These works are currently displayed in the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, which serves as the gateway to Arlington National Cemetery. In some instances, friends and family members have left snapshots of the dead combatant next to his or her painted portrait, sometimes accompanied by letters, documents, business cards, flags or cigarettes.
What kind of memorial work is accomplished by placing a small photograph in the vicinity of the work of art?
(Photograph by Ellen Schattschneider)