These images
on their own, especially the more recent ones, or those whose events I have spent more time thinking about (the bomb, for example) are painful to look at; however the images with Stevie added are absurd, and provide some relief that allows me to actually consider the disasters pictured. I have reached the point of overload, where I am likely to simply turn away from painful images, so for me, a surreal, or absurd black humor is a useful inroad to engagement with difficult subjects.
Stevie has talked a lot about turning her personal pain into art, and alternately claimed that some of her songs are about personal tragedy, or a public tragedy. The lines blur for her, somtimes to the point of ridiculousness, and these images remind of that ridiculous, melodramatic Stevie. If I am laughing, when I see these pictures, it is mostly at that Stevie, with her schoolgirl vanity and self-importance.
She managed to turn a top hat with a scarf—a symbol of mourning—and raggedy tattered Dickensian clothing, into a fashion statement. We have seen her dancing down a Depression era street in her sack dress singing about her "Gypsy", and we know there were breadlines there, and homeless, but she twirls and sings anyway, like Gene Kelly Singin' in the Rain.
Here is a link to an interesting paper on Surrealist Black Humour.
http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/pu...s/Suleiman.pdf
p.s. I sometimes find offensive the real—not Photoshopped— images of stars and politicians at scenes of disaster, for example, I am thinking of Bush's photoops at Ground Zero, or photos of Bono or Sean Penn in Iraq.