Harun Farocki had this way of making you look at things you’ve seen a thousand times until they suddenly feel completely alien. His 1988 essay film, Images of the World and the Inscription of War, is basically the ultimate example of this. It’s not a movie in the traditional sense. No plot. No actors. Instead, it’s 75 minutes of looking at photographs, archives, and machines while a voiceover talks about why we’re so bad at actually seeing what's right in front of our eyes.
Honestly, the core of the film is a huge "how did they miss that?" moment. Farocki centers the whole thing on aerial reconnaissance photos taken by Allied pilots in 1944. They were flying over Nazi-occupied Poland, specifically targeting the IG Farben industrial plant. They got the photos. They analyzed them. They checked the factories off the list. But it wasn't until the late 1970s that two CIA analysts looked at those same exact pictures and realized the Auschwitz concentration camp was right there, clear as day, right next to the targets.
The pilots saw it, but they didn't "see" it.
The Blind Spot of the Machine
Farocki argues that this wasn't just a simple mistake. It was a structural failure of how we use technology to perceive the world. When those analysts in 1944 looked at the film, they were looking for rubber factories and fuel depots. That was their "order." Since they weren't ordered to look for a death camp, their brains—and the military apparatus they were part of—simply filtered it out.
It’s a terrifying thought. You can have the most advanced camera in the world (for 1944), but if the person behind the lens has a specific agenda, the truth can stay hidden in plain sight for thirty years. Harun Farocki: Images of the World and the Inscription of War is really about that gap between "seeing" and "knowing."
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He links this to the concept of Aufklärung. In German, that word has two meanings. One is "Enlightenment"—the 18th-century philosophical movement about reason and light. The other is "reconnaissance"—the military act of scouting and gathering intelligence. Farocki shows how these two things have sort of merged. To "enlighten" a place in modern times often means to shine a military spotlight on it so you can decide what to destroy.
Why the Wave Simulator Matters
The film starts with these weird, hypnotic shots of a wave-making machine in a laboratory in Hanover. It feels totally disconnected from a war movie. But Farocki uses it to set the stage. He’s showing us how we try to simulate and "capture" nature to study it. We turn the ocean into a controlled experiment.
This leads into his discussion of photogrammetry. Basically, that’s the science of making measurements from photographs. He shows a machine that traces the lines of a building’s facade from a photo to create a 3D model. It’s about turning the messy, physical world into data. For Farocki, this is where the trouble starts. When the world becomes data, it becomes something we can manipulate, manage, and—eventually—obliterate without much thought.
The Inscription of War on the Human Face
Farocki doesn't just stay in the air with the bombers. He brings it down to the level of the individual. He talks about Marc Garanger, a French soldier who was tasked with taking ID photos of Algerian women in 1960. These women were forced to remove their veils for the camera.
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You see their faces on screen, and the look in their eyes is haunting. It’s a mixture of defiance and trauma. Farocki calls this an "inscription." The war isn't just happening on the battlefield; it's being written onto these women's identities through the act of being photographed against their will. The camera here isn't a tool for art. It’s a tool for the police. It's for "identifying" and "controlling" a population.
This ties back to the Auschwitz photos. In one of the most famous segments, he shows a photo taken by an SS guard inside the camp. It captures a beautiful woman who has just arrived. She’s walking toward the gas chambers, but she turns and looks back at the camera. For a split second, she’s an individual, not just a number or a target. Farocki notes the sick irony: the same system that is about to destroy her is the one that preserved her image for history.
Operational Images and the Future of War
If you watch this film today, it feels incredibly prophetic. Farocki was talking about these things in 1988, way before everyone had a high-def camera in their pocket and drones were a daily news item. He eventually coined the term "operational images." These are images that aren't meant for people to look at for pleasure or information. They are images made by machines for machines to carry out a task—like a missile’s guidance system or a facial recognition algorithm.
In Images of the World and the Inscription of War, we see the early versions of this. He shows flight simulators where pilots "fly" over digital landscapes. If you crash in the simulator, you just reset. It detaches the act of flying and killing from the reality of it.
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- The Problem of Abundance: Farocki points out that there are more images than the human eye can ever process. We have satellites recording everything 24/7, but who is actually looking?
- The Myth of Objectivity: We tend to think photographs are "the truth." Farocki proves they are just as biased as the people who take or analyze them.
- The Labor of Seeing: He suggests that looking at an image is actually a form of work. It requires effort to look past what we're supposed to see and find what's actually there.
How to Actually Watch This Film
Don't expect a popcorn movie. It’s slow. It’s quiet. The music is often just fragments of Bach or Beethoven that sound like they're being "erased" as they play. It’s meant to make you feel the friction of history.
If you're interested in media theory, history, or just how technology is changing our brains, you sort of have to see it. It’s currently used in almost every major film studies program for a reason. It challenges the idea that "seeing is believing." Sometimes, seeing is exactly what prevents us from believing the truth.
To get the most out of it, you should look for the version with the English narration by Ulrike Grote if you don't speak German. Pay attention to the "leitmotifs"—the recurring images like the eye being made up with mascara versus the plotter machine drawing a window. Farocki is showing you that the "beautification" of the world and the "calculation" of the world are two sides of the same coin.
Actionable Insights for the Modern Viewer:
- Question the Frame: Next time you see a "viral" photo or a piece of drone footage on the news, ask yourself: What is not in the frame? What was the "order" given to the person or machine that captured this?
- Recognize Operational Images: Be aware of how many images in your daily life are "operational"—CCTV, QR codes, face ID. These aren't just pictures; they are actions.
- Slow Down Your Perception: The next time you look at a historical photograph, don't just glance. Look at the edges. Look for the "blind spots" that the original photographer might have ignored.
Farocki's work reminds us that the "inscription of war" is often written in the things we choose to ignore. By learning to look better, we might just be able to see the things that matter before it's too late.