PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The essay analyses the photographs produced and circulated during the March 2011 tsunami and earthquake disaster in Japan, which show destroyed buildings, flooded landscapes, desperate people. Disaster destroys existing order. On first sight, the photographs of disaster depict this dissolution of order. The empirical analysis shows that the disastrousness of disaster is (also) createdthroughthe pictures of the disasters. The paper discusses why and in what way certain pictures reveal themselves to be iconographic of disaster and how they enter the visual memory as its representative. To achieve this, the study will invoke ethnomethodology. At the centre of the analysis is the question of the particular means with which these images illustrate the destructive force of the disasters and how picturesshowingdestruction and pain ('pictures of pain') turn into pictureseffectingpain in the viewer ('painful pictures'). The empirical study demonstrates: the photographs show the destruction of order; however, they do this in anorderly manner. for Jorg Bergmann's 70th birthday