Just went and saw Open See, an exhibition at the Photographer's Gallery in London, which "documents the experiences of people who travel from war torn, socially and economically devastated countries, to make new lives in Europe", by Jim Goldberg. Many images are harrowing--pictures of people who have fled war, persecution, or torture, whose families have been slaughtered, who have been sold into slavery as prostitutes or labourers, or who simply dream of a happier lives in the midst of ravaged and litter strewn landscapes, struggling to build a meagre existence in the slums constructed of the debris of our industrialised world. 

 And as always, these images arouse the usual emotions in me--first of all, a form of guilt, not entirely sure of what exactly, but a vague sense that how I live, the society I live in are partially to blame for this misery, then followed by an admonition "to do something about it". From the time my mother made me finish my dinner--"Think of those poor children in Africa!", she would say, and I would hang my head in shame and shovel the remainder of those thrice warmed up leftovers into my mouth--to today when I am still pissed off at those "poor children" for my mom's challenging cuisine... Guilt, shame, misplaced anger, more guilt, heavy stuff a few yards away from the shops and café lattes of central London. Looking at the pictures requires an effort to separate these images from the unreflected feelings they trigger in me. And actually, these pictures are not about me at all. After sifting through my own middle class shit, their true horror and despair begins to sink in, not as a call to action or for remorse, but as a process of understanding, of empathy.


The images seem vaguely familiar; many look like the generic visual disaster news fodder I have come to anticipate. It is grim there, in those far away countries.  I know it is there all the time; and I do not wring my hands, sell the Jag (if I had one), and dress in sackcloth and ashes every day. I do not even lose my sleep. Why the knot in the throat now when I see the pictures? So saturated with images are we, real or virtual ones, that they make us "tourists in other people's lives", as Susan Sontag says. Are Jim Goldberg's pictures more or less real emotionally than a dramatic episode of "Eastenders"? Are they a little afternoon trip into migrant horror land for an hour, good for a sigh, a twinge of conscience, a sad shake of the head before we "return" to our world again?


Goldberg goes further, beyond the image. Many of the pictures are accompanied by captions that provide clues, or they have been defaced or written on by the people they portray. He has not stolen the shot, appropriated a life for the titilation of Western conscience; he has returned the images to their rightful owners who mark them as their own. In Regarding the Pain of Others Sontag makes the point that the meaning of images is free floating and has to be grounded by words. In Goldberg's photographs, the words belong to the people depicted, as does their meaning.

 

Actually, these images are much closer to home. In my work as a psychiatrist, I see people dislocated by war, poverty, disaster, and personal tragedy every day, people from far away or from England even, people living on the streets of London or in so-called bed&breakfasts-- grungy hovels crawling with bedbugs, always next door to an off licence it seems. They tell me their stories, and of their nightmares and the fear that still haunts them, the shame they feel at their helplessness and dependency, the institutionalised humiliation of the benefits and housing system, the worry of how others look at them.  I examine the scars left by their torturers, prescribe medication so that they can sleep at night, listen to the pointless rage and hopeless expectations of the street prostitutes who got fucked by their uncles and stepfathers when they were six or seven. My head is full of crackly newsreel footage of their lives.

After Open See, I am surprised at how familiar it all seems to me. It is as if Goldberg's pictures, the words and traces of those lives illustrate my patients', the bits that only live on in their memories day-to-day, night-to-night, too incredible, irreconcilable with my own life, hopes, and dreams. In my mind, I have seen those pictures innumerable times. They are just as I expected them to be.

Jim Goldberg OPEN SEE, at the Photographer's Gallery, London