I had the same thoughts after the tsunami-nuclear disaster in Japan. And here too, I’m always struck by disaster aesthetics. These pictures online at Atlantic Magazine are too beautiful. It’s always the architectural element that predominates. Almost always, the human figure recedes from view, either invisible or diminished. I think it’s the transposition of landscape and built structure into each other (i.e. the city as ruined landscape), and the transposition of light into dark. Vast urban scale has something to do with it. And also the quickness of photography as a medium. And maybe Batman!
I don’t quite understand why it is a problem to represent the failure of human techne in images that have the human receding from view.
In any case, my favorite from the Atlantic is the photo of the dead deer “looking” into the camera eye.
it’s not the receding of the human that bothers me. it’s the sheer beauty with which disaster is shrouded.