Susan Detroy

Fatigue with the stress of life, current news, financial worries, sickness, broken relationships, abuse, wreak havoc. As I shot my (medicinal) drug needle miraculously through my fingernail instead of my thigh this week, I know and it hurts but there’s also something called ‘compassion fatigue’ in relation to photography. It is so called when people view vast quantites of shocking images, perhaps photojournalism from a warzone for example and they become muted, to the visual atrocities before their eyes. From as early as the 1980’s ‘compassion fatigue’ was also known as ‘Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder’, essentially it developed from an excess of compassion. David Campbell, Director of Programs and Outreach at the World Press Photo Foundation, has written a time pressing essay on the subject entitled ‘the dream of photojournalism and the cultural anxiety of images’, I urge you to engage with it. I further researched this subject and was satiated to read, Jeremy Adelman’s, (Henry Charles Lea professor of history and director of the Global History Lab at Princeton University) essay entitled ‘Don’t Look Away’. He said, ‘when Susan Sontag composed her first essay on photography, for Epstein and Silvers, she was thinking about ‘Napalm Girl’. The sight of her agonised face ‘was more memorable than a hundred hours of televised barbarities, it may even,’ she speculated, ‘have done more than anything else to mobilise the anti-War movement.’

In 2020 as we navigate between connection and isolation, company and solitude, know that when you’re creating mobile photography and art you are driving the framentary narrative forward, we can change things, for the better. This weeks carefully curated mobile photography and art showcase gets under your skin and leads the way for the ultimate climax. Enjoy!

If you would like your work to be considered for entry in to our weekly Mobile Photography and Art Flickr Group, please submit it to our dedicated group, here. You can also submit images to our Instagram tag for this section #theappwhisperer.

Many congratulations to the following featured artists this week including:

borisbschulz2009, G Billon, Susan Detroy, Susan Rennie, Jane Schultz, Gianluca Ricoveri, Andy Alexandre, Jill Lian, Rita Colantonio, Candice Railton, Lorenka Campos, Joseph Cyr, Milly M, Jun Yamaguchi, Clare Taylor, j.a graham, Eliza Badoiu, Jenny Pieters, @bortolinimassimo, Ile Mont, Sarah Bichachi, Christine Mignon, Alisa Smith Williams, Amo Passicos, Kim Clayton, Dina Alfasi, Rodolfo Alcaraz, Jean Hutter, Adrian McGarry, Mehmet Duyulmus.

Music this week – ‘Over the Love’ Florence and the Machine