1) Often, Ritchin's examples of photography of healing seem arbitrary-- merely another way of

fetishizing the less fortunate, even if that cathexis presents itself in the image of healing rather than
wound. Regardless of whether, for instance, we focus on the destructiveness of AIDS or the positive
impact certain health organizations have on a population, there is still little (in my mind) difference in
who these audiences really heal: the guilt-ridden Western or privileged audiences who consume
them. Although there is oblique reference to Mendel's photography helping the Siyalphia Li project
reach more patients, this is never explained in more detail, and I can only assume that Mendel also used
this project to equally further his career in his the photography world And even if this is not the case,
it will be for many other photographers with similar endeavors.
This brings me to my question: how can a photography of healing ever truly be possible in a system of
capitalism? Every photograph seems always already commodified and predicated on perpetuating the
very system responsible for so many of the social ills such healing projects mean to alleviate-- as
Ritchin himself proves in the conclusion, where he calls for more funding for photography of
healing. If always reliant on capitalist support, how much radical potential for change can we really
expect photography of healing to have?
2) As I looked over the Abu Ghraib pictures, I was brought back some of the optimisitic claims Ritchin
makes at the beginning of Of Healing and Peace, where he implies that we are at the end of
America's involvement in Iraq, [with] the potential end to a decade of conflict in Afghanistan.
Looking at these pictures and thinking about our continued military presence in both countries,
Richtin's naivete was highlighted but also my own complaisant complicity.
In the 2000's, there was a very lucid, defined anti-war message that can be evoked by recalling some
popular slogans: no blood for oil, clinton lied, nobody died, buck fush. We, as a collective
public, had an administration to blame, and when the Abu Ghraib photos came out, we could shift the
horror and the responsobility for the horror onto that administration, as well. Ten years and one new
democratic President later, that anti-war movement/moment/ethos has more or less dissipated, replaced
with an unconcerned or confused attitude of I'm not sure what we're doing 'over there.'
How can looking at photographs of old atrocities help rekindle our sense of horror at what happened
and what continues to happen in the war-torn regions the US is responsible for dismantling? Can
photographs that have already been digested by a public be brought to the forefront not as a footnote
to some present day issue, but rather as an independently valuable way of confronting our own
continued (though less decried) atrocities? Can the past shake the present's habitual complaisance?