Artistic shots glamorise conflict and desensitize the public

In her essay “Regarding the Pain of Others”, Susan Sontag discusses the issues that arises when general public or photographers make the argument that “if the horror [of war] could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take in the outrageousness, the insanity of war.” While another photographer, specifically from the interwar period, Ernst Friedrich indicated this in his book Kriege dem Kriege where the book showed different photographs from the First World War, which were not allowed to be published during the war. While these photographs are meant to shock the reader into being opposed to war, what this book does differently to most photographers is that it gives a caption for each photograph.

However, while this book was praised by leftists and academics, and was also denounced by his government, the book had no actual lasting impact on the public consciousness, in Germany and in Europe . One of the main problems that arises when believing that photographs can change people’s opinion is that you are putting too much faith in people’s ability to change their opinions when confronted with different, opposing viewpoints. A dangerous problem arises when people are bombarded with these photographs of conflict, people become quite desensitized to this . Prime examples of this are how the war in Yemen and Saudi involvement seems to be utterly unknown by anyone in the general public, as well as how Syria’s civil war flitted out of the public conscience as soon as ISIS lost its last remaining land in the country.

However, the idea behind this is not very new. While examples such as Vietnam are cited to have changed the public conscience, in reality it was the news anchors, people such as Walter Cronkite who fundamentally changed and shifted public opinions against the war. Then again, the Spanish Civil War was the first war to be properly covered by news. However, this coverage did not do much to change the course of the war, as most of the general public did not involve themselves with the conflict. Furthermore, what often happens with these photographs, if they are not shown in a certain context is that bad faith actors will then take them and use them to their advantage, often to promote their ideologies. Moving back to desensitisation however, it is important to realise that while it is indeed crucial to photograph these moments, it is also essential to note that, as I mentioned earlier, what matters is the context in which a photo is shown.

It really does not matter if you are bombarded with pictures of the cruelty of war if there is no ideology involved in delivering a message about these photographs. Therefore it’s important to make a distinction between what it really means to inform the general public, and what showing horrific photos actually does on it’s own. Going back to Vietnam, to imply that one photo (Napalm Girl) changed the course of the war is frankly preposterous and the general overview of that conflict needs to be taken into account.

This also is applicable to the migrant crisis. We are constantly shown pictures of dying and drowning migrants, yet the consensus amongst a large number of Europeans (while not the majority) is that they do not much care for this situation, and continue to oppose any further acceptance of migrants. Again, regarding war, this is not a symptom related to Vietnam. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya are almost forgotten by the general public, even with constant videos and updates. This comes back to the idea of desensitisation. Brains, when bombarded with information, tend to tune out what we would consider to be the least important information and only pay attention to what we believe to be more important.

This is exactly the result of the aforementioned information bombardment. While Libya is a slight exception for Malta, with regards to the other nations mentioned, including the issues in Burma, since we’re not directly affected by the wars and death, many people choose to do nothing. It really depends what we consider as essential, are you photographing the conflict, are you reporting on the conflict, are you related to someone there? These all have a different effect on how someone receives the photos. This is really the main issue with this specific kind of photography. While documentation is essential for public awareness, there is a point when the general public decides that the issue is too much trouble, and begin to ignore it, sometimes actively forcing it out of discussions.