Can photography change the world?

"<I><U>Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior, which has existed throughout history, by means of

photography?</U></I>" - James Nachtwey -<P>Most of you have probably already seen these videos, so whoever

hasn't check this out:<P><a href="

target="_blank">War

Photographer</a><P><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONp9Bvg3zKM&feature=related"

target="_blank">A James Nachtwey tribute</a>

Antonio, Watching the video brought back feeling I haven't felt for many years. It was almost like being there myself, but it didn't cause me to identify emotionally. I once again became the ultimate voyeur. A complete disconnection with the events I was seeing through the viewfinder.

 

I cannot see how photography will ever put an end to war. It motivates some in ways that are impossible to explain rationally. It's propaganda that cuts both ways. One group is aroused to the defensive survival mode, while another group sees only the horror and pain.

 

For anyone that has never experienced the rush of adrenaline death can rouse, when one knows that it can arrive momentarily there are no words that will serve the purpose. Those that have survived combat have a comradeship with every other person that has done the same, even the enemy.

 

Until old men that send young men off to war have to fight themselves nothing will change. It is the human condition.

Every event that passes changes the world.

 

The question can only be ...by how much.

Photography cannot change the world. It can, however provide a record of what happened.

 

I took a picture of a goose flying across a river. Can that photograph change the fact the goose flew across the river and therefore somehow change the world?

 

No idea what these links you provided are for, but that is a moot point. A pictorial record of an event can influence perceptions and actions and in some cases form basis for a legal case, but change the world.? No. Not any more than staring at the sun can make it go blind instead of you.

L.J. Leonard<P>If a pictorial record of an event can be basis for a legal case that is definitely changing the world for the

people involved in the case. The point of the videos is showing us (the world) events that we are mostly unaware of,

hoping

to cause a reaction of some sort in our behavior. This reaction could be voting for a different candidate, taking personal

action, reading more and earning some knowledge about the facts to inform others... whatever, but it definitely has the

potential to change the world in my opinion. What these photographers do is amazing and I pray that God blesses them

all

for their courage and determination to inform.

Of course photographs can change the world. Just as any other form of communication. A. Adams, as an example.

I used to be 'the glass is half full' kinda guy. Still am for the most part but am starting to swing the other way.

 

Personally I don't believe journalism, photography, movies, etc can change the world. They can change individuals, and they can help...but we're (humanity) is pretty muched pooched in my opinion.

 

England and America, 1936-37. Lots of news and photos from western Europe and Spain telling all about what Hitler was up to.

 

Did it stop him...did anyone step up till they in fact were being directly involved...not really, not on any national level.

 

Just heard an interesting gem...from our local Canon rep no less, who is someone who knows lots about lots.

 

Research how a TOW missile works. How it enters the tank, and when it explodes is not meant to kill the crew through concussion but by filling the interior with superheated gasses that melt the lungs when the crew tries to breath.

 

Nice....and people (lots of them when you research how many people are employed in the defense industry) spend their working days figuring this stuff out.

 

I've come to the conclusion of late that in reality humans got to the top of the food chain by being predators and willing to kill to get to the top of the heap...have been since cave man days.

 

Nahhh...we're not a nice species and photos aren't really going to change things.

I think it depends upon the definition of "change the world." Certainly, some photographs have affected people

directly.

 

For example, William Henry Jackson's photographs of the Yellowstone area documenting the Hayden

Expedition; and the resulting images, caused a public sensation leading Congress to designate the area as the

first National Park in 1872. If you extrapolate out from that point, countries all over the world have used the

National Park model to designate areas in their countries as national parks or wildlife reserves.

Well, sure, photos may not be like bombs in their ability to change the world dramatically and immediately. But, some

images have profound, if subtle and more slow, effects. Note the Bush administration's suppressive ban on photos of

military funerals and caskets returning from Iraq, for fear that the populace might become as engaged and disgusted as

we were during the Vietnam war and demand an end to this one like we did that one. Or the news media's visual and

vocal cheerleading as this Iraq debacle began, "photojournalists" embedded with troops, as if following around a football

team instead of an army going to war. Those images of our "trusted" and known regular reporters, safe in the arms and

humvees of our troops, are in part responsible for the abandon with which a people allowed a government to trick them

into sending their sons and daughters to die for no reason. And note how there haven't been daily close-up images on

network or cable television of the death and destruction in Iraq for years now as this war continues far in the unvisualized

background of most of our lives who don't have family or friends serving. Change the world, you bet.

Fred, I don't think your example proves that photos change the world.

 

Do you really feel that the ban on photos of funerals (Iraq soldiers) makes any difference to the way life is lived in, say Africa or Poland...or Canada for that matter?

 

Nope...again, it affects a limited audience. And I greatly admire those photojounalists who do try and change any part of this world we live in for the better...but I think this world would be pretty much the same place it is now if photography had never been invented.

 

Since 'olden' days it has more or less been a place where the rich and powerful do as they please, and though photos (or any media) alert the rest of us as to what is going on, they (the aforementioned rich and powerful) will still rule.

 

My example: we've all seen the research about global warming and all the photos showing decimated rainforests, watersheds destroyed after a large oil spill, etc. Has it stopped the rampant destruction of the environment by the energy companies??

 

Not that I see.

I think so. We live in a connected world -- there is nowhere remote enough so that what happens there is totally inconsequential to where YOU are. Whatever hot spot you're talking about they probably make or have something (natural resources, oil, chromium, whatever) that can affect you, even if you don't know it.

 

Certain iconic photographs -- that picture of the vietnamese getting shot in the head, or those pictures of the Kent State riot, etc. can actually change public opinion on a national scale. But of course those photographs are rare. Steady, less iconic photography can sway public opinion away from the war, as it did in Vietnam, which is why the Bush administration has so blatantly used embedded photographers they could control and why they have curtailed soldiers posting blog entries from the front. Just my opinion.

"Note the Bush administration's suppressive ban on photos of military funerals and caskets returning from Iraq, for fear that the populace might become as engaged and disgusted as we were during the Vietnam war and demand an end to this one like we did that one."

 

Then again they might have gotten enraged the other direction and demanded nukes.

 

I don't know what "change the world" means, but photography can't change human nature. Nothing can.

I am afraid of the opposite. Photography could make it worser. Why ? simple, by elevating the threshold of reaction in people continuously exposed to them. It is a simple pavlov's law. I suppose that today people if far less reactive than say 30 years ago against war and related consequences mostly for the flood of photos about its atrocities.

Bob, Like I said, photos are not nuclear bombs and I wasn't suggesting that a photo would immediately change the entire

world. Of course the Bush ban on photos of military funerals doesn't affect life in Africa. Duh. Think about the strides made

among environmental progressives in at least bringing global warming into the debate and into our consciousness. Yes,

Exxon and Cheney will resist. But educating people and providing convincing images that reach a popular audience, as in

An Inconvenient Truth, nudges our collective consciousness and is leading to global understanding of the issue and

practical steps toward moving forward on it.

Ask the question the other way around perhaps for a more open answer : Can the world change ( war )photography ?

People love to kill and cause misery. We are INTO IT. We rarely pay to see Inconvenient Truth but we flock to anything that involves blood and guts.

 

"Exon and Cheney" are no different than anybody else in that respect, except for their lack of conscience.

 

We remember Jesus, but we forget that his brethren (it wasn't just Rome's CIA) relished his torture and murder...still dote on it today. And we give tax breaks to holy franchise operations that teach us to forget about the people that have been tortured and murdered in his name ever since.

 

Photography entertains people who like to see agony, much more than it elevates sensitive souls.

 

Nic Ut's napalm girl is very popular: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm

 

Photography can cause as much change as an espresso can, up or down.

I think its been used more as a propaganda tool, than as a means to change society for the better. I think Nachtwey has a

wonderful eye, and his photographs are incredibly powerful- I don't think I'd wan't to be in his place though.

"Earning $49 million at the box office worldwide, An Inconvenient Truth is the fourth-highest-grossing documentary film to

date in the United States."

It already has and has been for about a hundred years now if not more.

It not only can but it does, constantly. Most of you seem to look upon change as in change the whole world (or perception thereoff). But if seeing a photo of famin in Africa for instance convinces you to donate a small amount of money to a relief fund then it has made a change. If (part off) public opinion is swayed because there would be more photo's published of returning and flagcovered caskets then there is change. It doesn't always have to be profound but in a nutshell it's as simple as that. You only have to think of Abu Graib to realise how powerfull images can be.

Photography has so many uses, and I see all of them with an ability to "change the world," although this is a very general term. Photojournalism for example, falls into the category of mass media, and is in fact a vehicle for pointing out things that are going on in our world that are in need of attention. Just because we don't necessarily act on the information journalists bring us doesn't mean the information won't eventually be used as reason for change. Media is the ONLY way any of us can form an opinion of what is going on in places we can't get to, and thus, photography as part of that media has a major role in public opinion, how we vote etc.

 

We seem to be fixed in this discussion on major world events like wars, but what about the less noted, but no less important changes that can come about in our personal, private lives as a result of seeing photographs? Can't an experience with a photograph remind us of our humanity, and that we should love one another, also then spur us on to go out in the world and change our small piece of it?

Fred...it seems you are arguing a completely different question than what was posed.

 

I think everyone agrees that photography can be powerful, informative, etc.

 

The question was "can photography change the world"

 

Can you name one photo that has had as much effect on the world as the wheel, the computer, the polio vaccine...the list could go on and on.

 

The wheel has affected 99.9% of the people on this planet. The computer probably 98% (even if people don't realise it)....as opposed to, say the very famous and aforementioned image of the girl in the Vietnam napalm attack...a very powerful image...yet very likely over 50% of the worlds population has never seen it.

I once heard a talk by Don McCullin, and someone asked him if he thought that his photographs of the Vietnam War helped to bring it to an end. He thought for a moment and then said, "They changed nothing."

Matt, This thread started with coverage of a war, a small one but war none the less. War is covered by the media, but the quality of the coverage has deteriorated. I have to listen to radio from everywhere but the US to find out what is going on in the world. I have to understand the point of view of the enemy as much as I have to understand the point of view of the friend.

 

Since everything is now digital, I have no faith that anything presented photographically is real, if it contains more then one subject in the frame. PS allows for too great a variation of the truth.

If the news comes from the American commercial media or the US Government, I know it is a prevarication at best an outright lie at the worse.

 

If humanity does by chance exist, I have yet to experience it personally. We don't have to love everyone. We do, however, need to learn to respect others no matter what they believe, and even if the hate us.

Bob, Actually I'm not addressing a different question. I'm addressing the same question differently from you. The

question was not whether photography can change the world as much as inventions such as the wheel. The question

was certainly not whether ONE photograph can change the world that much. The question, unqualified, was "Can

photography change the world?" It can and it does, as the numerous examples show that I and several others have

supplied.

 

It's very rare that an Einstein or a Bill Gates comes along. The world changes by virtue of giant steps and by virtue of

baby steps. What we each do in our own miniscule way has the ability to change the world at least in some way. If I

adopted your attitude, I'd never vote, because only one of 100,000,000 votes doesn't seem like it would change things or

make much difference. You have only to look at Florida in the 2000 election to imagine what would have happened if a

few more democrats had thought the way I do! The reason each one of us doesn't litter is because, each in our very

small way, contributes to the health of the planet. The reason each of us follows laws is that it contributes to the health

of the community. Of course every little thing we do affects the world. And photography, using visual imagery can, as

you say, be "powerful." What do you mean by "powerful" if not the ability to stimulate some sort of change? Is "powerful"

some kind of benign and passive adjective or does it suggest just the kind of dynamic many of us are talking about?

 

Sure, we can wait for the next Alexander Graham Bell. For that matter, we can continue to wait for the Messiah, or

another coming. Or we can stop waiting and recognize other individual and social mechanisms for change.