viz.

 Image Credit: The Guardian

As the memorial service for the victims of the Fort Hood shooting begins, I want to spend some time considering the visual representations of this event in the media.  Photographs representing the shooting seem to mirror our conflicted understanding of this event as both a military and a domestic tragedy.  In the absence of more information about the shooter and his motives, this ambiguity marks the photographs that appear online and in print.  Some photographs evoke Columbine, Virginia Tech or 9/11 by focusing on groups of mourners and the buildings where the shooting took place.  In so doing, these images emphasize the effects of violence on a place and a community.  However, other photographs more closely resemble traditional war photography in which the soldier is represented through metonymic devices such as a uniform or a gun.  

Image Credit: CNN

Examining these images together led me to consider the strange position of the military base in American life.  Military bases, for good or ill, are integral to the life of neighboring communities and yet there is also a distance between life on the base and life outside.  When 13 lives are taken on a military base it is a domestic tragedy and many of the photographers have been sensitive to this connection by showing mourners in the local community and images of soldiers mixed with civilians. 

Image Credit: NPR

In addition to shedding light on the liminal space of the military base in American life, I think these images also contribute to a discussion that Andi began on this blog several weeks back in which she described a photo-essay on the life of the American soldier.  The military base itself seems to fit into what Andi describes as anti-iconic images of war.  How various photographers choose to represent this shooting— as iconic or anti-iconic, domestic or military—reveals a great deal about how we imagine this tragedy.