Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Master of Arts

Program

Anthropology

Collaborative Specialization

Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Supervisor

Bell, Lindsay

Abstract

The ongoing crisis in Syria began in 2011 as a peaceful uprising. As the state turned to violent and repressive actions, photography played a central role in illuminating protesters’ civil disobedience, capturing violence as it happened. Since that time, it has become one of the most well-documented conflicts in history. Protestors, organizers, and witnesses circulated cellphone footage around Facebook and YouTube as a form of direct defiance to state media publications. As a result, a class of civilian photographers emerged who sought to combat narrative high-jacking by powerful actors. This research focuses on the perspectives of 10 Syrian civilian photographers with varying degrees of professionalization to examine their lived experiences and how they document and share visual representations of Syria. I argue that while accessibility to camera and communications technologies democratized photographic and journalistic practices in certain respects, civilian photographers are partly beholden to media and humanitarian institutions that uphold and reiterate media imperialist ideologies. I describe how photographers navigate forms of media imperialism as a necessary means to access resources and foreground a civilian narrative of the region’s past, present, and future.

Summary for Lay Audience

When people took to the streets of Dara’a, Syria, in March 2011, there was an overwhelming sense of imminent and urgent change. The Syrian protests saw a collective mobilization of hope and possibilities not seen before. Photography played a central role in illuminating protesters’ civil disobedience and actions and capturing violence as it happened. Protestors, organizers, and witnesses circulated cellphone footage around Facebook and YouTube as a form of direct defiance to state media publications. Under these conditions came a class of civilian photographers who sought to document what was happening and to resist control over Syria’s story, drawing in the world to witness. In Northwestern Syria, photographers, journalists, and videographers are most prominently young men whose teenage and young adult years were fraught with conflict, displacement and loss, yet whose memories of the events in Dara’a nonetheless continue to live in their minds to this day. Unlike external media lenses that often seek to solely bear witness from a distance, civilian images and videos are intimate and personal.

This research focuses on the narratives of Syrian civilians who create and share images of the ongoing Syrian situation. It examines how they make sense of their own and their community’s lived experiences and how theydocument and share their visual representations of war. I argue that while accessibility to camera and communications technologies democratized photographic and journalistic practices in certain respects, civilian photographers are beholden in part to media and humanitarian institutions which uphold and reiterate ideologies that maintain their power and consequently control the images that come out of Syria, and how the Syrian experience is understood. I illustrate how Syrian photographers navigate these forms of media imperialism in their struggles to participate in creating a narrative of the region’s past, present and future.

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