Degradation
by Jennifer Lavis

Sandow Birk’s piece titled Degradation, in the The Depravities of War series, depicts the humiliation and abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war chiseled on a four-foot by eight-foot woodblock.  In this image, Sandow Birk recreates a scene from inside the infamous Abu Ghraib prison where many atrocities have occurred.  He formulates his vision of Abu Ghraib through the images he sees on television and the internet, and uses them as a direct response to the way that the Iraq war is framed.  Leaked photographs of the abuse that occurred inside the walls of Abu Ghraib are the some of the only pieces of information that outsiders have of the prison and the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.

In Degradation, Birk highlights the victimization of both prisoner and soldier.  In this image, men are not only rendered powerless by being handcuffed and forced to bow on the floor, they are humiliated and degraded in the worst of ways.  This image depicts men left to lay on the floor, alone, head covered with a bag and bound.  Others are stripped and dragged around by a leash, treated as nothing more than a common animal, naked and subservient.  A group of men are forced to stand, heads covered, with their genitals exposed as the young female soldier, Lynndie England, ordered by higher ranking officials, threatens mutilation by forming her hand into the shape of a gun.  Men are being chased in the background; in the foreground an Iraqi prisoner is being taunted by an American soldier while behind bars.  To the left, American soldiers pose with an Iraqi who is being photographed, they are smiling as he stands in shame with his head lowered.  This image depicts the sheer boredom and carelessness of American soldiers in Iraq and the entertainment that they find at prisoners’ expense. 

We now know that the policy of torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners had approval all the way up the chain of command to the highest levels of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon.

Jennifer Larvis is an intern at Humboldt State University First Street Gallery