‘A knife without a blade, for which a handle is missing’: On the pleasure of photographic violence

Abstract

This article explores the role of photography in the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey in 2016. The photography exhibition titled Russia through Turkish Eyes was the background for the assassination. The author argues that photography occupies a paradoxical position of a metalanguage of an event that it simultaneously announces, records, destroys and celebrates while assuming the role of an impartial observer. Photography operates as a counter-factual, exceeding the documentary, and assuming the function not of a witness but of an active participant. The author suggests that in a primitive culture like ours, some objects acquire the status of a portal that facilitates the transformation between symbolic, imaginary and real forms of existence. A camera is one such object. The article concludes that the assassination of the Russian Ambassador cannot be easily separated from the photographic event that preceded it, accompanied it and immortalized it.