Photographing 7/7 dilemmas – Johannes Hepp and people’s cinema

Abstract

A terrorist attack at the heart of a city generates plenty of visual representations linked to it, obviously providing useful cultural insights of the community they refer to. Putting aside the critical approach to terrorism considering it as an expressionist performance and terrorists as artist and contemporary militants (VIRILIO 2004), a macroscopic division could be drawn between visual representations produced while the terrorist attack takes place and its immediate aftermath and/or representations produced when the initial emotional reaction has been revised and elaborated. This work aims at showing how two atypical photographic representations of London 7/7 may lead to a peculiar representation of London terrorist attack, bearing in mind that pictures are to be compared with quotations, adages and old-saying because of their intrinsic iconic power (BELPOLITI 2005: p. 71) and that they should be carefully analysed as related to official and standard media representations of urban catastrophes. Our focus is very specific and located in contemporary London a primary frame of reference. Post-photography and people’s cinema (SINCLAIR 2005) are going to be privileged field of study: in his London July 07. 2005 England, the German photographer Johannes Hepp portrays Edgware Road tube station twenty-four hours after the four detonations of London 7/7. Being part of his “The Day After”, a collection of digital panoramic images conflating the crucial moment of terror attacks and the passage of time, such a picture could be analysed as a deliberately attempt of representing the relationship between city life and post-terror attacks while people’s cinema (pictures and short film taken through mobile phones) requires to be analysed taking into consideration the importance of new media in the representing process and their technical characteristics, solid basis of its poetry of unease (SINCLAIR 2005). References: Baudrillard, Jean, Lo spirito del terrorismo, Milano, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2002 Belpoliti, Marco, Crolli, Torino, Einaudi, 2005 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, Guardare la guerra: immagine del potere globale, Roma, Meltemi, 2004 Sinclair, Iain, “Theatre of the city” in The Guardian, 14/7/2005 Sontag, Susan, “The immagination of disaster” in (a cura di) Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation and other essays, New York, Picador, 1996, pp.209-225 Tulloch, John, One day in July – Experiencing 7/7, London, Little, Brown, 2006 Virilio, Paul, Città Panico - L’altrove comincia qui, Milano, Cortina Raffaello, 2004 Post-photography: http://www.johannes-hepp.com/ (sito del fotografo tedesco autore del progetto The day after) [consultato nel gennaio 2009] People’s cinema: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2005/london_explosions/default.stm (sito della bbc dedicato agli attacchi del 7 luglio) [consultato nel gennaio 2009