confronting

as I begin intensive writing on my dissertation, I am forced not only to confront the big, bad demon that I have made this project (in my mind, of course), but also the photographs upon which I am writing. as I sat in the my cafe of choice tonight looking at and writing on peress's collection, the humanity within me reverberated. these images are just unnerving. while I have written a great deal on the genocide and have seen several photographs of the event, there is something about these photographs that strikes at my very core. perhaps this is partly due to my forcing myself to really look at these images, to spend time with the event that is depicted, to see them rather than glancing over them. in some of the conversations that I have had about my topic people have asked 'how do you look at photos like that? aren't you affected?' and sometimes, I'm not. sometimes it's just an academic thing. but then there are the other times, such as tonight, when something is shifted in me and I feel the weight of the images. it is during these readings of the photographs that I feel like these sorts of events are something that I am supposed to help prevent or remedy in some sort of way, something that is much bigger than myself. is that an idealist talking or what? regardless, this is likely to be a long weekend for me as I ingest and digest images that I would never before be able to even imagine. amazing what human beings are capable of.