Questions revolve around ethical standards that allow graphic imagery of war and mutilation, and the terror of the seen and the imagined to be a standard social input. On the surface, it would appear that such images encourage violent behavior. However, truths in imagery are what drive humanity to truth. Only through the observance of the consequence of war and conflict will we ever learn the truth of the horror within ourselves. Only through studying the results of such imagery on our civilizations can we hope to ascertain the true bleakness of our existence.
There once was a time when the minds of men glorified war and conflict. Romanticism was a response to the Age of Enlightenment, which spawned such movements as the American and the French Revolution (Scheidenhelm). The imagery was confined to the written word, and description of the blood and gore of war was left to the imagination. So pervasive was the reticence to show the real effects of conflict that when photography was invented and first used in a war theater images of death and destruction were left out. Roger Fenton was one of the first to document an armed conflict through the use of photography in the Crimean War.
Fenton entered the fray as an observer, taking with him two assistants and five cameras, in addition to other necessary supplies. Rather than document the actual bloodshed, as a modern war photographer would, he focused instead on capturing images of the camps, the port of Balaklava, officers from the French and British armies, and the Croats, Zouaves and Turks. (RogerFenton.org.uk).
As a product of the Romantic Era, Fenton had no choice but to restrict the view, and, therefore, the knowledge, of the consequences of conflict. It would not be long before that point of view became moot.
It was in America where a new concept emerged from the Romanticist Movement; it was called Transcendentalism. Transcendentalists came at a crucial time in the experience that is America. After the War of 1812, America sought its identity and found it in the land surrounding it. The principle Transcendental thought was that “man has ideas, that come not through the five senses or the powers of reasoning; but are either the result of direct revelation from God, his immediate inspiration, or his immanent presence in the spiritual world”(Gura 10). Thinkers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller passed this central belief into their writings at a crux point in American history; they served as the wet nurse of the American social conscience. As Emerson noted, “There are some peculiarities of the American mind in which we differ from our English brothers. They are more inclined to the matter of fact, and appeal to history; we, to the matter of ideas, and having no national history but a revolution, may appeal at once to human nature” (Emerson 20). With this differentiation between Europe and America, Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists found importance in the human soul, the human condition, and human imagination. It is their thought that “have come to define what is ‘American’” (Gura ix), and with that definition led the charge to a greater America by incorporating inclusion, equality, and action. Transcendentalists did not believe in the archaic or the sublime. Transcendentalists believed in the creation of ever evolving social structures that served its members rather than hindered them.
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. (Thoreau 118)
For Thoreau, life was much more than just seeing, feeling, tasting, hearing, and smelling. Life was an immersion into one’s surroundings, discarding that which is extraneous and concentrating on the fundamentals of living. Thoreau revealed that “vital theology demanded the assent of the heart” (Gura, 47). Through this central message, we see the paucity of ownership when that ownership opaques nature and man’s role within it. The purpose of man is to live within nature, to become one with it, to be a part of it through contemplation and reverence. The only answer for Thoreau was “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Such thoughts and motives, when applied to the everyday activities of American society, revealed deep inconsistencies. Slavery, as an institution, needed to be abolished. The Constitutional right to vote could no longer be withheld from any man and eventually any woman. Fundamental rights written into the Constitution could not be denied to anyone. It is here, in these small passages that the largest thoughts came alive in the American conscience. Thoreau published Walden in 1854. With American identity established; nature became its treasure chest, its heart, and its soul. Denying that treasure to anyone was unforgivable. However, the winds of change blew, setting a new stage with a new clock.
Realism found its beginnings in France and Russia during the mid-19th century. Resistance to this movement in America came in the form of Transcendentalism. During the American Civil War, the dead arrived in the homes and businesses of the North through graphic photographs of battlefield scenes. Suddenly, all thought of the romance of war and the dignity of conflict were eradicated. The search for something outside the self paused as the realities of war and life and death visited the national conscience through the photographs of Alexander Gardner and Mathew Brady. Images became an undeniable truth as photos extended “the horrors of the battlefield directly to the public for the first time” (Katz xi). Here, on the fields soaked in the blood of those who strove for supremacy, the American general public saw “the birth of photojournalism as we now know it” (Katz xii). With the impingement of this reality came the realization of a new form of literature where the real became all-important. A new method of thought that thrust out the imaginary and dealt with the painful realities of life became the order of the day. Hence, the name: Realism.
One of the great “realistic” writers, Jacob Riis, wrote utilizing images during the change of the century. His subject was the slums of New York. The text of his work, How the Other Half Lives, exposed the living conditions in the slums. This remarkable piece takes the reader directly into the small, ventless, compartments within which low-income families lived. Riis photographed the conditions and displayed them alongside the text. This combination was deadly and unignorably evident. Because Riis worked within the community of which he wrote, his understanding so intimate, and his descriptions along with the photos so compelling, the reader lived the slum.
Here lies humanity. Its blood, its guts, its brains spilled across a panorama of images that cannot and should not be ignored. To block out such images is to ignore that life that Thoreau craved, denying any access to “the marrow of life.”
Works Cited
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, and Elfriede Abbe. The American Scholar. 5th ed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1955. Print.
Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. First ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. Print.
Katz, Mark. First ed. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2008. Print.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York: Thomas Y Cromwell, 1910. Print.
Riis, Jacob. "How The Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis:." How The Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis:. Authentic History Center, n.d. Web. 03 March 2016.
"RogerFenton." The Life & Work Of Roger Fenton. RogerFenton.org.uk, n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2016.
Scheidenhelm, Carol. American Literary History: Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism. Loyola University Chicago. Web. 05 Dec. 2015.
