ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the aestheticisation of environmental disaster in George Osodi’s series of photographs Oil Rich Niger Delta (2003–2007). Depicting the horrific effects of oil drilling in his home country, Osodi chose to make art from real life suffering caused by environmental disaster. Visual analyses of individual photographs reveal carefully chosen compositions and colour selections. Next to building on traditions of art history, Osodi draws on the aesthetics of travel photography. Unlike many National Geographic photographers, such as Steve McCurry, Osodi evades exoticising his subjects by anchoring them in their contemporary environments and providing additional facts. Osodi uses a distinct visual strategy which consists in first drawing the viewer close to his photographs through their beautiful appearance and then revealing their motifs as structural problems of global extent via sequencing and contextualising. His series was not only consumed by the art world, with over 200 photographs shown at documenta 12, but also, due to his profession as photojournalist, in the news. The crossing of categories raises ethical questions related to the medium. This paper argues that the beautified photographs oppose a re-victimisation of their sitters by entering into the civil contract of photography. Highlighting the nature of the atrocity Osodi captured, the limitations of visually representing human rights violations connected to environmental crisis and the photographer’s ways of dealing with them are examined. This paper concludes that Osodi succeeds in visualising the invisibility of environmental crises as a particular form of atrocity through aestheticisation, sequencing, spatiotemporal anchorage and textual framing.

摘要

本文分析了乔治·奥索迪 (George Osodi) 的石油富尼日尔三角洲(2003-2007) 系列照片中环境灾难的审美化。奥索迪描绘了在他的祖国钻探石油的可怕影响，他选择从环境灾难造成的现实生​​活中的痛苦中创作艺术。对单张照片的视觉分析揭示了精心挑选的构图和颜色选择。除了以艺术史传统为基础，奥索迪还借鉴了旅行摄影的美学。不同于许多国家地理像 Steve McCurry 这样的摄影师，奥索迪通过将主题固定在当代环境中并提供额外的事实来逃避对他的主题进行异国情调。奥索迪使用了一种独特的视觉策略，首先通过照片的美丽外观让观众靠近他的照片，然后通过排序和语境化将它们的主题作为全球范围的结构问题揭示出来。他的系列不仅被艺术界所消费，在第12 届文献展上展出了 200 多张照片，而且，由于他的职业是摄影记者，在新闻中。类别的交叉引发了与媒体相关的伦理问题。本文认为，美化的照片通过签订民事摄影合同来反对其保姆的再次受害。突出奥索迪所捕捉到的暴行的性质，对与环境危机相关的侵犯人权行为的视觉表现的局限性以及摄影师处理这些问题的方式进行了审查。本文的结论是，奥索迪通过审美化、排序、时空锚定和文本框架，成功地将环境危机的不可见性可视化为一种特殊的暴行形式。