Binh Danh and Sontag

Binh Danh's chlorophyll prints provide an almost scary or spooky sense of reality of the Vietnam War. His photographs share a piece of history with the viewer because they are much more than just art, they allow you to almost feel the emotions of the soldiers or the Vietnamese locals, thus allowing a much more intimate connection to the photographs. In her article, "The Image-World", Susan Sontag refers to this same connection with the photographs by stating on page 350, "Such images are indeed able to usurp reality because first of all a photgraph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask." This statement shows how a photograph can really be more than just a picture or a piece of art and goes along with the common saying of "a picture holds a thousand words". Sontag further refers to this statement in her article, "Regarding the Torture of Others", where she discusses the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. She shows how in today's society a photograph can be much more than just a keepsake item, but how it holds a piece of someone's identity and their feelings. We can relate this to the tragedies of the current war in Iraq because of how so many pictures find their way back to the public across the world and display the awful string of events taking place in Iraq. Everyday, through pictures, we are shown the terrible aspects of war, and creates a lack of confidence and approval for this war in Iraq.