Visual Portraits and Erasure

Hello, everyone.

We ran out of time during yesterday's class session in SE 045 to do our own hands-on analysis of visual portraiture in more vital public contexts. However, I have come across two images to introduce in class tomorrow as we finish our discussion of Ellen Barton's "Textual Practices of Erasure" and begin our discussion of the profile genre.

The first is an advocacy advertisement published by the Physicians Against Land Mines (PALM) campaign, a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and dedicated to educating the public about land mines as an ongoing international concern. This particular advertisement was designed by Leo Burnett (advertising agency, Chicago). I will try to find out where it circulated. PALM ads have circulated, generally, in Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Bomb, and People magazines.

For your own interest, here is the text inside Emina's left leg:

“Emina Uzicanin was just 5 years old. Her family was living on the outskirts of Sarajevo. On a sunny afternoon in May, Emina was playing in a field behind her Uncle’s house. There, she spotted two little rabbits. As soon as she started towards them, the rabbits took off. So she began running. Five feet. Ten feet. That’s when it happened. An ear-shattering explosion ripped through Emina’s body—severing her left leg and leaving the rest of her badly scarred. Every 22 minutes another innocent civilian is killed or maimed by a land mine. Right now there are over 60 million unexploded land mines waiting jut beneath the earth in nearly 70 countries. We need your help to rid the planet of land mines and to help its victims like Emina.”

The second image is something you may have seen before. It is a spoof advertisement, otherwise known as an "anti-advocacy ad" by Adbusters.org, and of course, copyrighted to them. This particular ad was designed several years ago in response to the “Nike ID” campaign, which invited clients to custom-design their own cross-trainers.

The content in these two images is quite different, I realize, but it will be interesting to consider how visual representations like these can complicate our own notions of what portraits should and do achieve, especially when they are constructed on behalf of civic organizations, public issues, or community projects. I am especially interested in Barton's claim about the ease with which the United Way poster campaign erased the complexities of living as adults with disabilities -- rather than inspiring its viewers to authentically embrace the disability culture. Her claims raise larger questions about disability, public representation, and how to unpack verbal/visual portraiture for more complex social constructions.

See you in class tomorrow,

Professor Graban