Abstract
In Picturing Afghanistan, Paul Verschueren explores ‘dominant Euro-American ideas about the conflict [in Afghanistan] through an examination of the use of photography’ (p. ix). The author addresses three different discursive domains connected to the foreign intervention in the country – US public affairs and psychological operations, the western European press, and the photo-book – and analyzes how photographic images are used to frame and counter-frame the issue. Verschueren identifies an ‘official U.S. view’ (p. 45) that presents the war in Afghanistan as both a humanitarian act and a necessary and professionally conducted military endeavor. He then shows how this ‘double discourse of militarism and humanitarianism’ (p. 157) is partly reflected and partly reinvented in major western European newspapers, before he turns to the photo-book and its potentials for the presentation of alternative perspectives. By way of conclusion, Verschueren argues that the photographic visualization of war has ambiguous political effects and can be instrumental to both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic frames and performances.
The book is divided into four chapters, an introduction, and a brief conclusion. It contains an author as well as a subject index, and features 12 black and white illustrations that support the conducted analysis. The introduction and chapter 1 lay out the theoretical, methodological, and empirical frames of the study. Verschueren thoughtfully introduces his main analytical tools, social semiotics and frame theory, and convincingly limits the scope of his empirical research to three distinct data sets: photo-textual representations by the US Department of Defense and USAID, photographs and captions that were published in eight western European elite newspapers, and four photo-books. Each of the following three chapters is then dedicated to an analysis of one of these data sets.
Verschueren focuses on photography as a ‘photo-text’ (p. 2), i.e. he directs attention to the various discursive interconnections between images, captions, and other contextual features that tacitly influence the meaning of photographic articulations from beyond the explicit frame. By these means, the author avoids some of the pitfalls that tend to plague studies of photography in war where the explicit content of the image is often treated as carrying a particular message with a univocal political impact. Verschueren successfully argues for an inherent ambiguity of the photographic image that enables subversive liminal and hybrid articulations also in opposition to an intended dominant message or frame.
The three chapters following the theoretical framework are in-depth studies of the role of photography in discourses about the conflict in Afghanistan, its actors, and historical–political context. In chapter 2, Verschueren shows, among other things, how DoD and USAID photo-texts draw upon and reinforce particular master frames that suggest ‘that war can be managed provided technologies are precise, outcomes beneficial, nations united, and leaders responsible’ (p. 70). In chapter 3, these findings are brought into dialogue with the ways western European elite newspapers portray war, leadership, combatants, and civilians to assess mutual influences between an official US view and a western European press view. Verschueren finds a gradual increase in the use of a humanitarian rather than a techno-militarist master frame in the western European press and criticizes a pervasive exotization, victimization, and demonization of the Afghan other. He concludes that ‘all newspapers … made them [Afghanis] and the events in which they participated appear pertinent to their [the newspapers’] own domestic audiences’ (p. 129). Finally, chapter 4 provides an analysis of four photo-books ‘to expand the range of frames found in the western European press and in U.S. public affairs’ (p. 152). Verschueren suggests a potential of the photo-book to counter-frame and challenge the master frames evoked in and through official US and western European views. In the brief conclusion, Verschueren argues for the necessity of an active peace journalism that questions received frames and bears witness to ‘the human condition of … war, the experience of the local population’ (p. 157). Otherwise, Verschueren warns, ‘war remains a soldier’s story that overexposes foreign troop movements, military gear, and strategies and tactics, whereas the social, cultural, political, and historical complexities of the conflict remain underexposed’ (p. 159).
Although Verschueren delivers a convincing and thought-provoking analysis, his book exhibits a few minor flaws. One is connected to the introduction of the theoretical framework. The author has a tendency of introducing a wide array of different theoretical perspectives without always contextualizing them and without bringing them into fruitful dialogue with one another. As a result, the reader may be overwhelmed by approaches that appear disconnected, as their role in the deployed argument at times remains obscure. For instance, the introduction opens with a theoretical tour-de-force that, within the scope of a few pages, exposes the reader to the work of scholars such as Roland Barthes, Benedict Anderson, Edward Saïd, Michael Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Victor Turner, Homi Bhabha, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Barbara Babcock, and various acolytes of framing theory. While such a breadth of theoretical perspective can be seen as necessary for a proper contextualization of the presented study, the weak integration of various frameworks is a drawback. It would have been more effective to reduce the number of theoretical perspectives and present a more detailed account of a few frameworks and their various interrelations. Nevertheless, the application of Verschueren’s main analytical tools – social semiotics and frame theory – is convincing, and an activation of thinkers such as Bakhtin, Bhabha, or Babcock for an understanding of the ambiguous discursive potentials of photographic images in discourses on war is a very welcome contribution to the field.
In sum, Verschueren’s Picturing Afghanistan is a thought-provoking work that situates itself at the intersection between visual studies, media studies, journalism, and war. It will certainly find its readership among both professionals and students.