Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates photographs produced and disseminated by disability-focused human rights organizations. In particular, I examine Disability Rights International as a case-study and entry-point into the complicated landscape of framing the extraordinary body for interest groups.

Paper long abstract:

In a social-media inundated visual terrain, global human rights organizations must employ visual methods to communicate basic human rights violations. Disability Rights International (DRI) and other disability-focused activist groups traverse a fine line, navigating ethically fraught terrain in the production and distribution of photographs of people with disabilities. Are there alternative modes of production capable of enacting the agentive force of people with disabilities, while at the same time raising global awareness to the lived experience of those institutionally abused? This paper examines recent photographs from Tbilisi, Georgia of children in "warehouse institutions," disseminated by DRI, and the implications of such photographs in shaping perceptions surrounding the stigmatized disabled body and the disabled body that evokes care and compassion. To contextualize the images being used by DRI, I turn to the history of images of people with disabilities to draw out the importance of the contemporary instantiation of extraordinary bodies in human rights photography.