The Case Against Nixon’s “Pictures of People”

I thought this week’s readings and films brought up some interesting questions on a subject that has not been discussed much in the texts we have looked at so far in the course: the ethics and social ramifications of photography and film. While for the most part, we have been able to analyze photographs completely removed from their social backgrounds and effects, when regarding a subject as politically sensitive and important as the representation of AIDs, it becomes necessary to analyze the political and social effect an image might have. This becomes especially important in representing a subject around which there is much confusion and misinformation, meaning the public is in a sense a reliant on the images given to them to fully understand the disease and its sufferers. With this being the case, every image or representation of AIDs has no choice but to become immediately politicized, scrutinized for “what it tells people about AIDs.”

Ultimately, I found myself agreeing quite strongly with Douglas Crimp’s argument in favor of the film Danny and opposed to representations such as Nixon’s “Pictures of People.” What I found most interesting about Crimp’s analysis of these two works is that the key difference he identifies between them is the creators relation to the subject, and what that in turn signifies about the way the image is meant to make the viewer feel. Nixon’s images became famous because, apparently, “the viewer marvels at the trust between photographer and subject.” As Nixon’s supporters would argue, by showing this trust and intimacy that Nixon shared with his subjects, the distance between viewer and subject is reduced and the viewer is able to truly understand and empathize with the subject’s human suffering and not stigmatize them as an AIDs victim. However, against this point Crimp argues that by uniformly representing AIDs victims as sickly, disfigured, almost exclusively in hospitals or bland, cold backgrounds, and almost exclusively depicting men he only further reinforces the harmful notion that AIDs victims are meant to be pitied and feared, ignoring the fact that “The PWA is a human being whose health has deteriorated not simply due to a virus, but due to government inaction, the inaccessibility of affordable health care, and institutionalized neglect in the forms of heterosexism, racism, and sexism” as put by the protesters to Nixon’s exhibit from ACT UP.

However, before completely condemning Nixon’s work as contributing only to the further stigmatization and politlcal oppression of AIDs victims, Crimp reminds us that these images do in fact portray some people with AIDs, that “every image of a PWA is a representation.” To deny the validity of these images it to deny the very real experiences of the victims portrayed in them, and therefore it is important to acknowledge that there is in fact some truth in these images. This is where I think Crimp’s argument gets most interesting, as he delves into the question of the ethics of the image I alluded to at the beginning of my post. While he admits to being vaguely opposed to Nixon’s work on the grounds that “the best they can do is elicit pity and pity is not solidarity,” he ultimately concludes that when seeking to represent AIDs politically ethically, the representation must be analyzed “not in relation to the "truth" of the image, but in relation to the conditions of its construction and to its social effects.” In this regard, while it is true that Nixon’s images are “truthful” representations, the fact that they serve to elicit pity in the viewer and through doing so tend to reinforce harmful stereotypes means that in their social effects, these images are unethical, they “do not help us … probably hinder us in our struggle.”