On August 17, Omran Daqneesh, a five-year-old Syrian boy, narrowly survived a Bashar al-Assad-backed airstrike in Aleppo. Overnight, a still from the video taken of Omran in the back of an ambulance was shared thousands of times on social media. Before there was even time to internalize or process the image, it was shared millions of times on Facebook and Twitter, making it available for all — to some who were likely informed about the conflict in Syria, but also to some who could only experience shock without the framework to understand the sentiment. Emotional reactions to the image were certainly immediate, but what are the broader consequences of its viral spread and the spread of images like it?
Artists have a long history of contributing to the understanding of war and coping with its consequences. During World War I, for example, many artists encouraged and perpetuated what is referred to as the “Myth of the War Experience.” Writers stood on the battlefield, and through their work, they fostered a link between soldiers and civilians at home. Those far from the conflict confronted mass death at such a high scale for the first time, and artists’ testimonies filled the urgent need for an explanation and an understanding. German poets such as Körner and Schenkendorf participated in the shaping of a national consciousness in which the fallen soldier had found glory in dying for his country. This narrative helped make sense of the horrors of the war, but it was one of cult, of idealization of the youth’s vigor and energy, and of redemption. People embraced the myth because it brought them comfort in such difficult times. Artists allowed the public to see the war through a more personal and emotional lens — they were conveying a subjective outlook on the war, information they couldn’t get by reading the paper.
Similar to these WWI artists, war photographers are often our only emotional porthole into ongoing conflicts in the world. David Douglas Duncan, Don McCullin, James Nachtwey, and Lynsey Addario, among others, record the daily lives of people in war zones. They contribute invaluably to the information delivered to the public and to the media, but just as we might digest media narratives skeptically, we should remember that war photographers present their own version of truth through their lenses. War images are privy to the same sensationalism as other news items. The diversity in reportage testifies to the singular character of each body of work.
John Szarkowski, director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art for almost 30 years, proposed a framework for the viewing of photographs with reference to the photographer. He suggested that the public view them either as a mirror, “a romantic expression of the photographer’s sensibility as it projects itself on the things and sights of this world,”or as a window, “through which the exterior world is explored in all its presence and reality.” This notion does not involve the ethics of the photographer, but rather the ethics of the viewer. When it comes to war photographs, it is often that case that the image is viewed as a window, instead of as a mirror. Despite its important role in helping to shape our views of a conflict, the war photograph is first and foremost a reflection of the author’s sensitivity to the event unfolding in front of him or her. However, an inexperienced viewer can be disconcerted when put in front of a photograph. Susan Sontag, in her 1977 collection of essays “On Photography,” argued that the viewer can only have an emotional response to a shocking image if he or she does not have prior awareness of the conflict. “What determines the possibility of being affected morally by photographs is the existence of a relevant political consciousness,” she explained. If the viewer is not already informed, they cannot make sense and benefit from war photography. We must not only be aware of the artistic dimension of the image — the idea that it is a mirror and not a window — but we must also be educated as citizens when we process it. Without those conditions, photographs do not further our understanding of conflicts. Rather, they only speak to our immediate sensible reactions.
Given social media’s overwhelming presence today, the image is twice removed from the viewer. The photographer was always removed from the viewer, recording his own truth of the event, and now social media has become a second filter between one viewer and another. Each time someone clicks “share” on Facebook or Twitter, the message from the photographer becomes less clear and the point of the photograph more muddled. This only further complicates our relationship to war photographs. Reactions to Omran’s picture were immediate and homogeneous. The public received it and spread it instantaneously, without necessarily questioning the source of the image or the context in which it was taken. Some did point out that Omran was one of 12 children treated that Wednesday and that at least three people had died in the airstrike. While a strong symbol such as Omran is key to understanding the extent of the sufferings of the war, the framing of the image needed to be put in perspective and understood as a subjective outlook on an event that injured others besides Omran and even killed some. Nonetheless, the photo stirred important reactions — like a six-year-old US citizen writing to President Obama to ask him if he could adopt Omran — but it was also undoubtedly seen and dismissed by people who did not understand the realities behind that image.
Social media, as an instantaneous source of communication, makes it very hard to maintain control over how images are presented. In the past few years, the rapid and undetermined spread of war photography on social media has diluted its meaning. At the same time, professional photographs have become seemingly interchangeable with amateur photographs. This changes both the political and aesthetic purposes of the photographer. Anyone can take a graphic picture and obtain thousands of likes in a few minutes, but experienced photographers have a better chance at touching and informing people on wider issues all at once. The project to give the viewer an access to conflicts is supported by an artistic process. The role of civilians who share images of a dramatic event happening around them should not be dismissed or undermined, but they do not have the same function as professional photographers do. Amateur photographs often carry high shock value and might be decisive in an emergency situation to ask for public safety, but professional war photographers who embrace both political and aesthetic concerns in their work offer a better prospect of people understanding and acknowledging the broader conflict it illustrates.
In a world where anyone can take a viral photograph, without explanation or context, war photographers are certainly the most equipped to record complex events and a “nuanced truth.” War photography might not be a pure window into violent conflicts, informing us of pure facts; if appreciated and understood as art with a particular perspective, though, it is an incredibly powerful tool for populations far away from danger to cultivate a better understanding of the reality of war.