While stories of people drowning at sea as they flee to Europe has been a staple of news reporting this summer, it is this heartbreaking picture that has shocked the country into action. Charities have seen donations soar, petitions have been signed and marches planned since it was published – while, in the face of mounting pressure, David Cameron has finally agreed to taking more Syrian refugees. But this is not the first time a photograph has changed the course of world events.
much of what follows is difficult to look at
Phan Thi Kim Phúc
If the horrors of war can be distilled into one image, it might be the 1972 picture of nine-year-old Kim Phúc, screaming as she flees the napalm explosion that has burnt the clothes from her body. Nick Ut’s black-and-white photograph swayed US public opinion against the war, and helped to bring it to an end within six months of publication. After taking the shot, Ut threw a raincoat over Phúc and drove her to hospital, saving her life.
Vulture stalking child
Kevin Carter’s 1993 photograph of a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture caused mass uproar. The macabre picture highlighted the despair and severity of the famine, but criticism centred on Carter. He was vilified for not going to the child’s aid – despite the fact that journalists were told not to touch famine victims for fear of spreading disease. Carter won a Pulitzer prize for the image, but killed himself just months later.
Little Rock
Elizabeth Eckford was 15 and painfully shy when she became one of nine black schoolchildren in Arkansas to be enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957 following a ruling that ended the segregation of schools in the US. On the first day of school, Eckford arrived to find the doors barred to her by soldiers of the National Guard, and a mob of classmates and parents screaming at her. The teenagers were eventually accompanied inside the school by the soldiers, but not before they had endured physical attacks and even death threats. This was the image that made sure desegregation went ahead.
Tank Man
No one knows what happened to the solitary man who stood before the tanks of Tiananmen Square, but his image, taken by Jeff Widener, broadcasted the brutal massacre by the Chinese army. Around a million protesters were said to have joined the call for economic and political reform in China in 1989, with student demonstrators occupying Beijing’s famous square. But on 3 June, the military opened fire on those who had gathered, rolling over others with their tanks. The government branded the demonstrators rioters and banned this image. But outside China, it has endured, ensuring that the courage of the unarmed protestors will not be forgotten.
Abu Ghraib
Unlike other world-changing pictures, these are not beautifully composed, arresting photographs taken by professionals, but grainy spur-of-the-moment snaps. Capturing the degrading torture and humiliation of Iraqis by the American soldiers who took the pictures as “trophies”, their publication severely damaged the credibility of US troops. The abuse uncovered after they were published fuelled anti-US anger and undermined Washington’s claims to be bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.
Migrant Mother
In 1936, Florence Thompson was 32, a widow and worked as a farm labourer. Her husband had died of tuberculosis, and she was the sole provider for her seven children. When her car broke down, she ended up out of work with other labourers on a pea-picking farm, selling her tyres to buy food. Her children were killing birds to survive, and eating frozen vegetables dug from the nearby field. Photographer Dorothea Lange asked to take her picture to illustrate the plight of the pea-pickers. The picture became a symbol of the human suffering in the Great Depression, and the federal government sent 20,000lb of food to California migrant workers.
Looking at this picture, it’s impossible not to imagine your own child – or any child you love … a paramilitary police officer carries Aylan Kurdi near the Turkish resort of Bodrum on Wednesday 2 September. Photograph: AP
Photo editors and experts discuss their decision to publish an image that has shocked the world by Olivier Laurent in Time
“The reason we’re talking about this photograph is not because it’s been taken or not because it’s been circulated, but it’s because it’s been published by mainstream media,” says Hugh Pinney, vice president at Getty Images, a distributor of news images. “And the reason we’re talking about it after it’s been published is because it breaks a social taboo that has been in place in the press for decades: a picture of a dead child is one of the golden rules of what you never published.”
The last time a photograph of a dead child was widely published was in July of 2014 when New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks captured the mangled bodies of four Palestinian youths killed in an Israeli airstrike on a beach in Gaza. What is unique about this case, however, is that many news outlets’ decisions to publish the images followed a public outcry on social media. “We got to this point because individuals have had the balls to publish the pictures themselves on social media,” says Pinney. “I think that gave the mainstream media the courage and the conviction to publish this picture.” READ MORE HERE
Make a donation
Make a financial donation to a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that is doing related humanitarian work overseas. These could include:
● Save the Children: distributing essential items such as nappies, hygiene kits and food
● Red Cross Europe: providing emergency health services at central train stations
● Refugee Action: advice about claiming asylum, the asylum process, asylum support
● World Vision: providing food, water, shelter, education and psychosocial care
● Médecins Sans Frontières: humanitarian agency which has three rescue ships in the Mediterranean
● Aylan Kurdi Fund: named in honour of the drowned child and set up within 24 hours of the horrific pictures circulating around the world. All proceeds are going to charity Hand In Hand For Syria
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