The Value of a Shocking Image

“What is the value of a shocking image?”

This was the question at the centre of what is, perhaps, the most interesting correspondence I’ve had in recent memory.

My correspondent was the author of a book that regularly ranks on those “most controversial novels of all time” internet listicles. This is not a man I would have thought it within my power to unsettle. And yet, apparently, I had done so.

I had written this man to ask him to write a blurb for a coffee-table book I’m in the process of writing. In his reply, my correspondent praised the work in terms that were genuinely moving for me. But he also told me, quite frankly, that he did not at all enjoy reading my book. I understood exactly what he meant–I didn’t particularly enjoy making it either. But we both understood that an experience doesn’t need to be enjoyable to be valuable. What followed was an utterly fascinating conversation about the value of confrontational art and the question of where, as a creator, one should draw the line.

“The way I felt reading your book… That must have been how people felt reading mine a few decades ago.” No doubt he was right. Although I had found his novel more than a little confrontational, I also understood the sincerity in his claim that “shock value” wasn’t his primary intention with the work. Honestly, one never knows what the viewer/reader will take away from your work.

And so, the central question. “What is the value of a shocking image?”

My correspondent proposed that the value of a shocking image lies is what comes after, in the reaction after the knee-jerk reaction has worn off, in the questions the readers are provoked to ask of themselves. I think my correspondent was quite right in this point. But, at the same time, this perspective is rather intimidating for an artist; it leaves so much of the meaning/messaging of your work in the hands of someone who you’ve recently agitated. There’s a danger of genuinely traumatizing someone, even with content/trigger warnings in place. And, even if the work isn’t particularly traumatic for the reader, there’s the issue that leaving someone with a raw nerve might provoke angry backlash rather than introspective meditation. How do you know if you’ve pushed things too far? Everyone’s notion of “crossing the line” is a little different and people like me (and, probably, my correspondent) tend to be rather desensitized. So it can be genuinely difficult to know where the fulcrum should be placed. 

What’s often omitted from discussions about “art that goes too far” is the flip-side of the coin: there can also be damage done if the imagery isn’t sufficiently shocking. Some subjects are inherently upsetting. To omit the true ugliness at the core of such a subject is a disservice–it amounts to whitewashing. Some topics simply cannot be discussed honestly without also discussing, in rather frank terms, violence and death. (Imagine a discussion of World War II that didn’t talk about the deportations, the internment camps, the furnaces that burned day and night…) There are, sadly, many topics in our history that cannot be broached without looking into the face of horror.

The more I sat with it, the more I came to realize how closely my correspondent’s perspective on shocking imagery cleaves to the perspective of another great writer. In a letter to a childhood friend, the great Franz Kafka gave the following perspective on the value of literature:

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.”

While I’m not so naive as to think that Kafka had in mind the kind of art myself or my correspondent produce, nevertheless, I think there is implicit in his words a defence of shocking or controversial imagery.

Having considered both my correspondent’s perspective and Kafka’s words, I found myself revisiting the central question. 

“What is the value of a shocking image?”

I still struggle with this. But I think that sometimes it’s just the wrong question to be asking. Sometimes it’s best replaced with another:

“Why was this image so shocking in the first place?”

From time-to-time I hear from people who find the images I make upsetting or shocking. This happens less often than one might expect, but it does happen. And I listen to what they have to say, insofar as they are approaching the conversation in good faith. And I think there’s something worth reflecting on here, about what exactly it is in my photographs that is provocative…

Many of my subjects come directly from the butcher. I’m not a food photographer, obviously, but a lot of what I do is not so very different from what food photographers do. For what it’s worth, I think that the context cues that separate “mouthwatering” from “disgusting” are more delicate than we often realize. And that, I think, is something interesting and worth reflecting upon.

Many of my subjects are scavenged from nature–the raccoon head and muskrat in the image above, for example. At its core, these carcasses are just part of the cycle of life–their presence is something we would all find perfectly run-of-the-mill were it not for the fact that we live our lives at such remove from the natural order of things.

And so we come to the worm at the core: death is a part of life. So much of our discourse around the subject is polarized between sensationalism and silence. Since the outset of this project, I’ve been interested in the idea of striking a middle ground between these extremes, following in the tradition of the Dutch masters, updating their iconography for modern sensibilities.

Finding that delicate balance between sensationalism and silence, knowing where to draw the line, knowing how shocking is too shocking, remains a challenge. I don’t think there are answers here; everyone is different and there is probably an audience for almost any kind of artistic expression, assuming it’s being made with intention. And so I keep on making things and seeing what works–as my correspondent did, for some decades after his shocking novel debuted. For me, personally, I feel like there is some sense of harmony to what I’m doing. It remains to be seen if the audience feels the same way.