Aesthetics of Catastrophe | Public Culture - Spring 2008

Aesthetics of Catastrophe - Aric Mayer

Sometimes you read an essay and you feel that you've managed to expand your thinking, you've learned something new, you now have a new ability, however rudimentary, that you can put into your critical thinking toolbox.  And sometimes you read an essay and you wonder just exactly what the author is attempting to convey.

After reading Mr. Mayer's essay and viewing his accompanying photos (more can be found here, including those  with the essay) I felt a little of both.

I understood everything he was saying thanks mainly to his clear writing.  However, maybe because I am not able to view these photographs as three to six foot squares, I couldn't quite make the connection.  In other words, without seeing his exhibition, I felt that he failed to achieve his goal, which was, in his words "to present the images of the storm’s aftermath, (and) to critique our reception and expectations of them as well." Instead, I think he was more successful at reflecting, not critiquing, our ambiguous reactions to Katrina.

For many, Katrina was simply more cinema verite, just another drama playing out on television.  For others, it was a call to action.  Mr. Mayer examines the responses from private citizens to government bureaucracies and finds them all unable to adequately cope.

He, rightly, I believe, explains that our method of relaying images and stories of the disaster to the world were utterly inadequate.  Photos are severely limited in scope.  Television, too.  Neither can pass on the magnitude of the damage, of the emptiness, of the despair of the people of New Orleans.  "You had to be there," is truly the correct phrase in this instance.

And so Aric Mayer took his camera there immediately following the storm and took photos. He made large versions of these photos to help the viewer become immersed, to be there.

He purposely made the photos with beauty in mind.  My first thought on viewing these, which is a reflection on me and not Mr. Mayer's photography skills, are that they would make excellent jigsaw puzzles.

I am the America that he is critiquing.  But I think he made the photos too pretty to be horrific.  Do I not have enough humanity in me?  Or is it that I have too much of what passes for humanity today?