Skeletal figures - Presence and the unrepresentable in images of catastrophe

Images of trauma and catastrophe are ambivalent images. It is not clear whether they represent a practice that transforms the horror they depict into a form that enables a well-defined cultural relation with the catastrophic event, or whether the images take over the haunting presence of the bodies that are depicted in them and make well-defined cultural relations difficult. Photographs of dead bodies and of extreme suffering, as they are taken and reproduced relentlessly in Western media culture, return that which we attempt to put to rest by explanations into a remaining presence again - into a remnant and into an object of the gaze at catastrophe. Images of catastrophe thematize the gaze at catastrophe. I argue that this gaze is at the core of our attempts to take in the effects, and gain an understanding, of catastrophe. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.