The photograph I am looking at, is supposedly the corpse of a jumper from the World Trade Center after the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. The corpse is sprawled on the sidewalk, apparently it lays as it has fallen – there has been no tampering with the subject (one would assume). It appears to be a portly man still in his suit. The corpse is laying face up, the torso is still intact. However there is a just a mess of innards sprawl about below his torso. The entire bone of his left leg appears to be stripped and “unfolded” from his leg, like a blade from a swiss army knife.
It is extremely grotesque and explicit, far more than anything I have found in Susan Sontags writing. So grotesque, in fact, my palms are sweating and my stomach is churning as I am writing this. When I look at this photo, I am forced to try and make logical sense to how this fall happened. However, the more hypothetical scenes I try to make coherent, the less sense it does in fact make, the more my stomach gets sick.
Firstly, Sontag would have to judge the authenticity of the photos, as she has successfully done in Regarding the Pain of Others. Susan Sontag, in her relentless skepticism, would frame this photo in its context, and thoroughly investigate the meanings of the experience of the observer of this photograph. She may offer several possibilities by Susan Sontag will not draw an absolute conclusion on it.
