Introduction. Envisioning Justice: Mediating the Question of Rights in American Visual Culture

When the scandal of U.S. American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib broke after pictures began to circulate on the media in the spring of 2004, the public was shocked and outraged to find out that such atrocities had in fact been committed. However, as Susan Sontag pointed out, written reports about these incidents had circulated for over a year but went ignored by politicians. Unlike such reports, which can easily be suppressed, “[t]he pictures will not go away” but “continue ..