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The Hazards of Witnessing: Photographing the Philippine Drug War

Vincente Rafael, The Hazards of Witnessing: Photographing the Philippine Drug War

April 10, 20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor, 5:30-7:30PM,

Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, with light refreshments

In this paper, I inquire into the narco- and necro-politics of the war on drugs under the regime of Pres. Rodrigo Duterte. While still popular among his supporters, the war has nonetheless also called forth other responses. One example has been the work of photojournalists. In the context of the drug war, how does photojournalism become a kind of advocacy as much as a form of mourning? How is trauma and witnessing braided together in the experience of photographers covering the drug war? What are the ambivalent effects of aestheticizing the image of those killed by the police and their death squads? How does the aesthetic rendering of death make possible the act of witnessing even as it repeatedly endangers it? What is the fate of photographic images once rendered into commodities by the global media and put into circulation for the consumption of anonymous viewers? And among families of the victims, how is the dead remembered in ways that elude photographic capture?

 April 10, 2018 

Speaker: Vincente Rafael

Location: Department of Social and Cultural Analysis

Global Asia Program