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.
Often, when photographers find themselves in warzones or at scenes of natural disasters, they are thrown into a challenging moral predicament. Their journalistic instinct is to document what they see and bring it to the attention of the wider world, but this often means they are watching terrible things happen and not intervening to prevent the suffering they witness. At the same time, photographers often put their own lives on the line, and many have paid the ultimate price in their efforts to get to the centre of the action.
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.
The power of photos like these derive their power from an uncompromising depiction of humankind at its worst, but many images also exist which celebrate the great things humans have achieved, and they deserve an equal place in history. Just take a look at Buzz Aldrin's shot of the first human footprint on the Moon, taken in 1969, and marvel at the human spirit of adventure and discovery.
Often, when photographers find themselves in warzones or at scenes of natural disasters, they are thrown into a challenging moral predicament. Their journalistic instinct is to document what they see and bring it to the attention of the wider world, but this often means they are watching terrible things happen and not intervening to prevent the suffering they witness. At the same time, photographers often put their own lives on the line, and many have paid the ultimate price in their efforts to get to the centre of the action.
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.
The power of photos like these derive their power from an uncompromising depiction of humankind at its worst, but many images also exist which celebrate the great things humans have achieved, and they deserve an equal place in history. Just take a look at Buzz Aldrin's shot of the first human footprint on the Moon, taken in 1969, and marvel at the human spirit of adventure and discovery.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment