Why can't we take our eyes away from the grotesque and terrible places?

In recent years, due to the popularity of smart phones, body cameras and monitoring status, the public is surrounded by images of shooting, execution, kidnapping and various crimes, and it is very easy to spread. This week, two journalists were shot in Anaker, Virginia. One was shot by the killed photographer on live television, and the other was shot by the gunman. He took a video when he aimed and fired, adding a layer of terror to the violence. Through the lens of the murderer, we see the effect through his gun hole, which is deeply disturbing. The Smithsonian historian roams "Baduo" and explores the spiritual world in the 19th century. Alexander Gardner regards himself as an artist, and the vivid images of the cruel war image of a country's division and civil war casualties that the artist Martha McDonald may teach us inspire a scholar's inner meditation

, so we can't turn a blind eye. Just like a driver passing by the scene of an accident, our heads will turn. We are inevitably attracted by disasters, especially the moment of death.

Now it is full of our culture, which can be traced back to the appearance of photography in the 19th century, especially alexander gardner's works during the Civil War. Gardner brought his camera and darkroom to the battlefield, creating a visual record of the corpse and explosion landscape in modern war.

Once spread, these shocking photos have contributed to great changes in American society and culture, especially breaking the restrictions on the allowed scope or being suitable for people to see. In the expansion of this vision, Gardner's camera helped us create a modern world, and we also lived in the moral and aesthetic consequences of the world created by this camera.

In the autumn of 1862, Alexander Gardner smelled a business opportunity, took his camera to the battlefield near Fort Shipes, Maryland, and made it known as the photo of the dead in Antioch. Showed to the public and purchased at Manhattan Gallery in Mathew Brady (Gardner worked for Brady at that time), and their effects were exciting.

* * wrote that these photos have a "terrible clarity", and they brought the sober and tragic war reality back to the north. The emphasis is obviously on the documentary nature of these photos and how these authenticity influenced the northern culture at that time, including not only its art and literature, but also its emotions and emotional habits. From edmund wilson to Drew gilpin Faust, historians have described the Civil War as a watershed in American cultural transformation. From the way we write to the mourning ceremony,

Gardner's photos, by bringing the war home, obviously played a role in this transformation, which we can loosely call modernism. "There was complete silence." After the Battle of Antietam in 1862, the fallen Allied artillery lay around the battery. (Alexander Gardner/Bob Zeller Collection)

However, it is a mistake to quote Gardner's photos only because of their sober influence on Victorian American culture and art and their influence on high culture. These photos are also the beginning of visual fear, which has always been a major part of popular culture and underground culture. These photos, as part of their connection with magic, attract people's feelings, including horror, grotesque and incredible psychological attraction.

Gardner's photos of the dead bodies, people and animals caused not only a rational reaction to the reality of modern war, but also things that were forbidden or forbidden to watch.

These photos are against the law, not only because the death of bats will damage morale (the United States is still assiduously examining the photos of the coffins of fallen soldiers in action, and it is only allowed to show them when the families of the deceased agree or attend military funerals), but also because they have attracted the public department of Lal General Electric psychologically. People want and still want to be shocked.

when Gardner dragged the body of an allied army away from the burial line in Gettysburg and skillfully put it into a picture of a dead rebel sharpshooter, he was creating a melodrama-like story, which made the American audience immediately familiar with the popular literature immersed in Gothic, Poe and even dark fairy tales. Even the rock landscape and closed crevices exude the breath of Gothic architecture.

When placing the body in the rock corner of the devil's lair, Gardner psychologically shows how a seemingly safe refuge suddenly becomes a place of violent death.

No one is safe, even in their home. The title of "The Last Sleep of the Rebel Sharpshooter" may be an unintentional satire on Victorian etiquette, because this photo makes the capriciousness and sudden death of soldiers on the battlefield obvious. However, this horror can still be dealt with by integrating it into familiar cultural forms.

After Gettysburg, Gardner tried to organize the audience's intellectual and emotional response to these distressing images. In the process of arranging the body, Gardner tried to divide the reaction into parts in a rational and visual way with his familiar language, although the casualties in Gettysburg made this task impossible.

the monster has come out of the bottle.

Because Gardner didn't leave any written records, we don't know how he responded to the public's reaction to his photos of Antietam. However, these photos did create enough sensation and marketing opportunities for Gardner to leave Brady and set up his own business in Washington.

, but there is another one, which is not easy to measure. The reaction to casualty photos is beyond reason, and it relates them to our age: this is the simple intrinsic attraction of shocking photos: trenches full of bodies in bloody alleys; Dead horse; Bodies in a field all over Gettysburg; The crazy carnival of the whole modern war.

What is unforgettable for us? At that time and now, quite a few people in Gardner's audience were probably excited about the casualty photos. Even today, these photos are hard to do. In order to explain, except as part of the attraction of human psychology to forbidden or invisible things, "adjust the rope." On July 7, 1865, a group of people prepared to hang Lincoln's accomplices. (Alexander Gardner/ Indiana Historical Society (P49); Daniel R.Weinberg Lincoln*** conspirators collection)

These photos are sensational in the original usage of this word. This heartfelt attraction also revolves around Gardner's photos of Lincoln's conspirators being executed. Gardner has the exclusive right to shoot the death penalty. His series of photos show the official death ceremony from the reading of the death penalty to the swinging of the body under the gallows. These photos are news and an official record, indicating that justice has been done and recorded for the public to exclude from hanging for security purposes. All these are carried out in the name of law and country, but the execution is also for visual spectacle. An example of an executioner's master of art, four conspirators fell from the trap at the same time.

So photographic evidence exists at different levels of intention. Like the photos of war wounds, they also exist on a sub-rational level. At this level, because of Gardner's high perspective, the audience is positioned as a voyeur of thrilling terrorist events, whether in the distance or overlooking the gallows. When the trap door of the gallows was opened, the conspirator fell down. In Gardner's photo, the shutter of the camera clicked to capture the moment of death, which combined documentary with sensational temptation.