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Shifting Horizons @ Digital Window Gallery

27 March - 31 March 2024

PLATFORM: ISSUE 6

26 March 2024

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Saturday Town: Launch Event

10 April 2024

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Coming Soon: Saturday Town

11 April - 18 May 2024

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PLATFORM: ZINE LAUNCH EVENT

21 March 2024

Home. Ukrainian Photography, UK Words: Tour

4 March - 28 February 2025

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Home: Ukrainian Photography, UK Words @ New Adelphi

4 March - 8 March 2024

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CREATIVE SOCIAL: IN THE ABSENCE OF FORMAL GROUND

2 March 2024

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We Feed The UK @ Exterior Walls

8 February - 31 March 2024

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Contrail Cirrus: the impact of aviation on climate change

7 March 2024

Exhibitions

Tree Story @ Liverpool ONE

16 February - 1 May 2024

Open Source #27: Saffron Lily – In The Absence of Formal Ground @ Digital Window Gallery

6 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contemporary Photography from Ukraine: Symposium @University of Salford

4 March - 5 March 2024

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Is Anybody Listening? Symposium: Commissioning and Collecting Socially Engaged Photography

29 February 2024

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Different approaches: Artists working with scientists

15 February 2024

Events

LOOK Climate Lab 2024: All Events

18 January 2024

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Diesel & Dust @ Digital Window Gallery

18 January - 31 March 2024

Events

Tree Walks Of Sefton Park with Andrea Ku

21 January 2024

Past Events

Artists Remake the World by Vid Simoniti: Book Launch

31 January 2024

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Shift Liverpool Open Meeting

6 February 2024

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We Feed The UK Launch and LOOK Climate Lab 2024 Celebration

8 February 2024

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Cyanotype workshop with Melanie King

17 February 2024

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End of Empire: artist talk and discussion

22 February 2024

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Book Launch: What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes

24 February 2024

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Local ecology in the post-industrial era: open discussion

14 March 2024

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Waterlands: creative writing workshop

23 March 2024

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Plant a seed. Seed sow and in conversation with Plot2Plate

16 March 2024

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Erosion: panel discussion

9 March 2024

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Waterlands: an evening of poetry and photographs

23 March 2024

Events

Force For Nature Exhibition

27 March - 28 March 2024

Voices of Nature: Interactive Performances

28 March 2024

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Sum of All Parts: Symposium

27 February 2024

Exhibitions Main Exhibition

LOOK Climate Lab 2024

18 January - 31 March 2024

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MA Socially engaged photography Open Day event

1 February 2023

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Tish: Special screening and Q&A

13 December 2023

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Book Launch: A Look At A New Perspective

23 November 2023

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Community workshops @ Ellesmere Port Library

6 November - 5 February 2024

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Book Launch: ‘544m’ By Kevin Crooks

30 November 2023

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Bernice Mulenga @ Open Eye Gallery Atrium Space

17 November - 17 December 2023

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Bernice Mulenga: Artist Talk

18 November 2023

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Local Roots @ The Atkinson

14 October 2023

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Community @ Ellesmere Port Library

26 October - 11 April 2024

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Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023

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Deeds Not Words: panel discussion

12 October 2023

Past Exhibitions

Deeds Not Words @ Atrium Space

3 October - 22 October 2023

Ode To Our Space @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

A Look At A New Perspective @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

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Book Launch: Crow Dark Dawn

19 October 2023

Past Events

Exhibition Launch: A Place of Our Own

28 September 2023

Reflections

12 September - 22 December 2023

Close
Close
My Mum (in the middle) and her two brothers
Aden, Yemen
Cinema, Yemen
C-Span Screen Capture

Layla Hussain — How does photography shape our understanding of places that are sites of conflict?

Last winter, my grandmother left Yemen to live with my family in Liverpool, UK. On the night she arrived, my sister and I had helped her unpack. This did not take very long seeing as she is a very simple woman. She still prays on the same prayer mat she used 30 years ago. She still insists on reading from a Qur’an that is bound by sellotape. Along with her possessions, was an envelope filled with photographs; all of which had 1964 handwritten on the back. We sat down on her new bed, and she explained who was who in each photograph, most of whom were family. 

When we arrived at a particular photograph (above), my grandmother shared that the gentleman carrying my uncle “from what she could recollect” was part of the British armed forces deployed in Aden, and that he was a regular customer at my grandfather’s kiosk.

In 1839, the British East India Company took control of Aden, a port city in the south of Yemen. Following the opening of the Suez Canal, Britain had used the port to monopolise trading between Europe and the far east. Over the years that followed, families of the deployed arrived in Aden. Subsequently British occupiers established schools, churches, hospitals, pubs, hotels and country clubs all across the city. Aden had remained a British colony until 1967 when Britain had ultimately withdrawn all its forces. 

Another photograph in my grandmother’s collection was of a cinema in the neighbourhood she lived in, Bureqa; or better known by its English name, Little Aden. As my grandmother recalled, the cinema was built by British Petroleum (BP), and was initially for the families of deployed workers and British occupiers. It showed a host of Hollywood movies as well as popular Bollywood and Egyptian movies of that time to appeal. 

Edward Said once declared “the power to narrate or block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism and constitutes as one of the main connections between them”1. Imperialist rhetoric has consistently advocated the occupation of a country under the evangelical guise of “civilising”, which is infamously expressed in notable poet Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden”. The poem expresses white colonialism as a selfless conquest as well as the inferiority in the dispositions of colonised groups2.

Yemen is no exception to this same rhetoric. In the 1960 documentary ‘Aden Protectorate Levies’ by the British Pathe, not only is Aden described as a place “where barbarism flourished”, but the documentary also cites British administration as the main reason for the “cessation of barbarism”3.

When you google search a country, the images you are generally met with are reflective of the culture of that country. Photographs of historical monuments, traditions, and public figures. Once a country becomes a site of conflict, this changes. In 2014, war broke out in Yemen. When you search for Yemen on Google Images today, the results are flooded with conflict saturated photographs, largely published by external media outlets. Army tanks. Destroyed buildings. Heavily armed soldiers. UN negotiation conferences. Families suffering from malnutrition. In these photographs, Yemeni people typically assume one of two identities: the victim or the aggressor. The malnourished child. The soldier. Photographers have garnered worldwide attention for their photographs covering the devastation this war has caused, and their images are often used in humanitarian campaigns to foster empathetic responses. Senator Bernie Sanders, for instance, displayed a photograph by the photographer Giles Clarke during a debate in 2018 about the US’ continued involvement in the war4. The photograph depicted a Yemeni child named Batool who had been suffering from severe acute malnutrition5

(screen capture/C-span)

While these images are powerful, it is important to question the role such imagery has. There has been vast research into the implications of media images used in humanitarian campaigns. Evidence shows photographs of starving children in particular foster empathetic responses (e.g. donating to humanitarian organisations or petition signing). Children are “ultimate emblems of innocent vulnerability and dependence”, and while pictures of starving children are employed as a way for charities to attract support (e.g. donations or petition signing), these same images have been accused of denying those pictured of “dignity and agency. In recent years, leading NGO Save the Children have been criticised for using ‘shock’ images of starving children looking pleadingly into the camera (and therefore at their potential saviours), in a manner that reinforces a paternal logic with traces of colonial iconography. The organisation has since moved away from this imagery, towards images that are underpinned by notions of solidarity rather than dependence6. However, the vast majority of NGOs still continue to use “shock” images of children despite ethical criticisms.

Outside of humanitarian campaigns, photographs of children suffering have always sparked humanitarian responses and international outrage. In her book, “On Photography”, writer and political activist Susan Sontag makes mention of Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, otherwise informally known as “The Napalm Girl”, claiming it “did more to increase public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities”. 

Despite the initial impacts “shock” images can have, Sontag argues that once a person starts down the road of seeing photographs of atrocities, they become “anaesthetised” declaring that 

“The vast photographic catalogue of misery and injustice throughout the world has given everyone a certain familiarity with atrocity, making the horrible seem more ordinary—making it appear familiar, remote (“it’s only a photograph”), inevitable”7

Over the years, western media publications have under-represented the identity and culture of a number of countries in conflict and overrepresented tragedy; perpetuating the narrative that conflict is a norm/inevitable in these places. People have lost their jobs, their homes, their friends, and their family members in Yemen’s ongoing war and whilst photography has served as an essential medium for the world to see what is happening to the people of Yemen, it is equally important to reject the idea that their long term suffering is their only truth. Why is an entire country reduced to a circumstance? How does the legacy of imperialism impact photography today? How does photography shape our understanding of people living in places that are sites of conflict when the only images we see of an entire people are images filled with suffering and AK47s?

— Layla Hussain, Liverpool

References

  1. Said E. Culture and imperialism. London: Vintage; 1994.

 

  1. Kipling R. The White Man’s Burden. London: The Times; 1899.

 

  1. Aden Protectorate Levies (1960) [Internet]. www.youtube.com. 2014 [cited 22 May 2020]. Available from: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Dy4NClDMgeM&t=8s

 

  1. Bernie Sanders stood beside an image of a Yemeni child as the debate on ending US involvement in the Saudi-led war intensifies [Internet]. www.businessinsider.com. 2018 [cited 12 July 2020]. Available from:https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-displayed-photo-of-starving-child-during-yemen-war-debate-2018-12?r=US&IR=T

 

  1. Giles C. ‘Batool’. SA’ADA CITY, N. YEMEN. May 2017 [Internet]. www.instagram.com. 2017 [cited 17 May 2020]. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/BXftHWnDFPb/

 

  1. Aiello G, Parry K. Visual Communication: Understanding Images in Media Culture. London: SAGE Publications; 2019.

 

  1. Sontag S. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1977.

 

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