It's perhaps one of the most overused clichs ever, but it's hard to deny that in some cases a picture really is worth a thousand words. Artistic photography can is a fascinating use of the medium. However, documentary photography is probably the purest and most powerful form. It has the ability to highlight injustice or suffering, but it can also give people hope.
War photographers, or those who travel to scenes of natural disasters, for example, often find that they are confronted with challenging moral dilemmas. In their journalistic role, they are there to document rather than intervene in the events they witness. This may seem like a job for soulless individuals, but photographers routinely risk death themselves in their effort to spread awareness of human tragedies.
One image perfectly epitomises the moral dilemma war photographers have to struggle with, whilst also giving some impression of the dangers they face. Taken in Vietnam by Nick Ut in 1972, it shows a group of Vietnamese children running in panic from a US napalm attack. At the centre of the photo is an unclothed girl named Kim Phuc, shrieking in desperation having been severely burned. The photo hit a nerve around the world, displaying the shocking consequences of America's tactics, and giving further impetus to the anti-war movement.
Perhaps even more disturbing is a photo known as The Last Jew of Vinnista. Found in the personal photo album of a Nazi SS soldier, it was taken in 1941 and shows an emaciated Jewish man sitting on the edge of a corpse-filled ditch, with a death camp guard holding a pistol to the back of his head. He was killed perhaps less than a second after the photo was taken. There were 28,000 Jews living in the Ukranian city when WWII began - none of them survived.
Whilst photos like these derive their power from their brutal representation of humanity at its worst, images that convey the beauty and promise of the human condition can have just as much impact. Fast forward to the end of WWII, in which so many millions of lives were lost, and behold US Marine photographer Joe Rosenthal's iconic shot of four of his colleagues struggling to raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi in Japan. It was taken under heavy enemy fire, and perfectly conveys the courage of the soldiers fighting for a cause they were profoundly committed to. Whilst some may feel this image is tarnished by America's neo-imperial behaviour in recent times, it nevertheless shows what the ideal of freedom meant to the 4 individuals in the frame, as well as the man behind the camera.
War photographers, or those who travel to scenes of natural disasters, for example, often find that they are confronted with challenging moral dilemmas. In their journalistic role, they are there to document rather than intervene in the events they witness. This may seem like a job for soulless individuals, but photographers routinely risk death themselves in their effort to spread awareness of human tragedies.
One image perfectly epitomises the moral dilemma war photographers have to struggle with, whilst also giving some impression of the dangers they face. Taken in Vietnam by Nick Ut in 1972, it shows a group of Vietnamese children running in panic from a US napalm attack. At the centre of the photo is an unclothed girl named Kim Phuc, shrieking in desperation having been severely burned. The photo hit a nerve around the world, displaying the shocking consequences of America's tactics, and giving further impetus to the anti-war movement.
Perhaps even more disturbing is a photo known as The Last Jew of Vinnista. Found in the personal photo album of a Nazi SS soldier, it was taken in 1941 and shows an emaciated Jewish man sitting on the edge of a corpse-filled ditch, with a death camp guard holding a pistol to the back of his head. He was killed perhaps less than a second after the photo was taken. There were 28,000 Jews living in the Ukranian city when WWII began - none of them survived.
Whilst photos like these derive their power from their brutal representation of humanity at its worst, images that convey the beauty and promise of the human condition can have just as much impact. Fast forward to the end of WWII, in which so many millions of lives were lost, and behold US Marine photographer Joe Rosenthal's iconic shot of four of his colleagues struggling to raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi in Japan. It was taken under heavy enemy fire, and perfectly conveys the courage of the soldiers fighting for a cause they were profoundly committed to. Whilst some may feel this image is tarnished by America's neo-imperial behaviour in recent times, it nevertheless shows what the ideal of freedom meant to the 4 individuals in the frame, as well as the man behind the camera.
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