Das Leiden Anderer betrachten

A man in a white shirt, his sleeves rolled up, with a leather ammunition belt over the top. He is in the process of falling backwards; his knee is at a 90-degree angle, his right arm outstretched, the gun slipping out of his grasp: “The Falling Soldier” by Robert Capa from 1936, an image of the Spanish Civil War, apparently taken in the moment of death. Initially, photography was the reproduction of something real with “an immediacy and authority greater than any verbal account,” the American author Susan Sontag wrote in her essay REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS (2003). The ideal of the war photography was to show the “true face” of war and to bear witness: This is what it was like, this happened! And now, when AI manufactured images are almost indistinguishable from genuine photographs? The internationally active video artist and director Ayla Pierrot Arendt explores the manipulability of reality. Together with the ensemble, she tells of journeys through the war zones of our time, captured by war photographers, peace activists and influencers searching for a realness that is absolutely real. How can we find anything like objectivity now when it is constantly being questioned between fakes and reality? Who is making and who is looking at images of suffering? What – and who – are they good for?