Americans have a fascination with photographs! I remember the very first trophy
photograph that I saw. It was a hunter who killed grizzly bear, and he stood
there standing over his dead trophy with a proud smile on his face. This was
when I was a child and didn't truly understand the human psychology behind
such photographs.
As I grew up I saw thousands of such trophy photographs taken by many different
types of Americans, but they all had certain things in common. The people
posing in those photographs were all standing over something that they either
killed or conquered! They all had a proud and arrogant smile on their face, and
they all thought that they were superior to whatever they killed or conquered.
These same smiles can be seen on the faces of the American soldiers who are in
the trophy photographs taken in Iraq where Iraqi prisoners are being abused,
tortured, humiliated, and dehumanized! They were conquered and then stood over
just like they were animals! While this kind of photographing is relatively
new, the mindset behind such photographs is not.
In 1492 Christopher Columbus did not have a camera to take trophy photographs
of the people he conquered. But if he would have had a camera you can be
certain that he and his crew would have taken trophy photographs of the people
he destroyed. When slavery was at it's highest peak in this country, those
slave owners didn't have a camera either, or they would have also taken their
share of trophy photographs as well.
During the civil war photographs started to be taken of certain people doing
certain things to other people, but they weren't necessarily trophy
photographs, they were more like documentary photos. It wasn't until sometime
later that the real concept of trophy photographs took off. It took off in such
a great way that parties were held, and days off were given. People from within
and around a certain community would travel for miles to participate in taking
these trophy photographs.
What were these photographs of, you ask? Black men and women being lynched!
Black men and women and in some cases their children being raped, burned,
castrated, and hung from trees! Many Americans posed next to these tree hanging
people, these pieces of strange fruit so that they could be in a trophy
photograph and show everyone just how they dealt with people who they
dehumanized, humiliated, conquered! They too had the same sort of self
satisfaction and smile on their faces that the soldiers in Iraq have on their
faces!
Yet the U.S. Government along with the mainstream news media continue to act
like this policy of torture, abuse, dehumanization, and trophy photo-taking is
not the American way! I strongly disagree, and history is the real truth
teller, not the government!
In Struggle From
Death Row at San Quentin Prison
Kevin Cooper
May 17, 2025