James W. Foley, Martyr, or How to Sublimate a Violent Death Online
Alone with his executioner in the desert, James Wright Foley died in front of two cameras and under the gaze of multitudes. Today, the American journalist is a posthumous celebrity, partly a celebrity of what was supposed to erase him... Can we say that his execution, through its recording, its posting online and, above all, its broadcast, has become something else? Did the censorship and the omnipresence of screens allowing for the diffraction of the images in the video override his disappearance in some way, as is the case with the martyrs, who accept death without fading into oblivion? This “freeze frame” aims to question the effect of such a video on the vision of death and its limits.