A Tale of Two Photos
By John Freeman
It’s ironic that as I casually posted a photo of two toddlers in a stroller on Facebook and Instagram yesterday, another photo of a small boy overseas was going viral. The difference between the two pictures? Mine showed happy kids in straw hats waiting for their dad outside a shop in Berlin; the other photograph captured a dead child, face down, washed ashore in Turkey without his father nearby, a victim of the refugee crisis overseas.
I was particularly struck by the front page headline in The Independent, a London newspaper. “Somebody’s Child,” it read. These two simple storytelling words don’t scream at you, but the sadness of the photo does. Images of children like these — innocent casualties of disasters — have provided turning points for bringing change in the world.
The power of the single image is strong.
Who can forget Nick Ut’s 1972 image of a screaming Kim Phuc, 9, running from an explosion of napalm in South Vietnam? What about Stanley Forman’s collapsing fire escape photograph in Boston, which shows a 19-year-old woman and her goddaughter hurtling toward the ground? Or Kevin Carter’s haunting image of a starving Sudanese child barely crawling as a vulture waits in the background?
All three of these Pulitzer Prize-winning images led to change. The American people began to finally feel the impact of American troops in faraway Vietnam. “War — What is it Good For?” became a national anthem. Fire escapes in major cities such as Chicago, New York and Detroit were quickly inspected for stress faults. “Could what happened in Boston happen here?” And the world was awakened to the plight of undernourishment in countries that rarely made international news. As photojournalists, we’re taught to react to the moment and take the picture. If we don’t, the decision to publish it or not cannot be made. And sometimes the consequence of publishing an image is not immediately known. The impact of social media’s ability to multiply a message cannot be ignored either.
American publications and websites will no doubt have more tough decisions to make about the appropriateness of publishing what some would call “graphic images” like the little boy washed ashore. At a time when the U.S. entertainment industry pushes the limits with grisly violence on T.V. and the movies, it’s ironic that many American publications shy away from upsetting readers. Digitizing or blurring the boy’s face to hide his identity is not the answer. This was not an offensive photo to me. It showed no gore but elicited a response of sympathy and sadness. And as a journalistic image, it told the story in a meaningful way.
One of the little boys in my photo from Berlin is wearing blue jeans and red shoes similar to the Syrian boy who died at sea. All three youngsters appear close in age. Perhaps in a perfect world, they would have all lived prosperous lives in Germany after the refugee exodus plays out across Europe.
I didn’t ask for the names of the children in my photograph, but the world now knows that the dead Syrian boy is Aylan Kurdi.
He was somebody’s child.
Associate Professor of Journalism
University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications
jfreeman@jou.ufl.edu
