Correction appended below.
When Eddie Adams died 10 years ago, many people thought his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1968 picture, “Saigon Execution,” would be one of history’s most graphic, violent and enduring war photographs. It was hard to imagine its power — splashed across front pages and helping to turn public opinion against the war — ever being surpassed. Horst Faas of The Associated Press called it the “most perfect news photo I have seen in my 50 years of photo editing.”
But little did we know what was to come in the decade after Adams’s death.
When Adams was one of the world’s top photographers, professional photojournalists were guided by editors and backed by their newspapers, wire services and agencies. Today the perpetrators and combatants — from Mexican drug cartels to the ISIS rebels who behead their captives — have become a growing source of images, shooting, editing and releasing their own photos and videos. As they attempt to control the message, honest and ethical journalism risks being shoved aside in favor of images that are pure propaganda, if not outright fabrications.
Until recently, the majority of war photographs came from professionals like Adams. He took his most famous image on Feb. 1, 1968, the third day of the Tet offensive, when Americans were taking overwhelming casualties. Forensic analysis later determined that during that fraction of a second in Adams’s photograph the bullet was still passing through the prisoner’s head. Back home, the photo raised many questions about the war.
To his peers as well as his students, Adams frequently emphasized, “the most powerful weapon in the world is a photograph.” A documentary film about his life titled “An Unlikely Weapon” reinforced his belief in the inherent power of the image.
But today’s generation of photojournalists can no longer cover many conflicts because the risks are too great. It’s suicide. Newspapers have stopped sending staff members, and freelancers — like James Foley or Steven Sotloff — are filling the void and paying the price. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 80 journalists have been kidnapped and 71 killed since the war in Syria began.
The conversation is alive again: What should we show, what should we not publish? Is today’s picture editor an editor or a censor? The debate applies only to mainstream media, of course, because on the open Internet anyone can publish anything.
My Facebook news feed now is an endless scroll of videos of beheadings in Syria by ISIS and in Mexico by drug cartels; photographs of lynchings of adolescent rape victims in India; and mass executions of Christians who are trapped in Iraq. Only these pictures are not from photojournalists; they are being shot by the murderers and their associates, or documented in the bloody aftermath by courageous human rights activists.
Fred Ritchin, the New York University professor and critic, recently wrote in Time’s LightBox blog that violent news images matter “because they provide reference points for both the present and the longer view of history.” He also said, “The descent into hell takes many steps, and an increasing number of them can be found only a click or two away from what the mainstream media presents.”
The 1980 book “Camera Lucida” by Roland Barthes is an inquest into the essence of photography and its impact on viewers. Based on his own experience Barthes believed that a photograph could — in an emotional leap — connect us with the dead. When he looked at an 1852 photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jérôme, he suddenly realized that he was “looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.” Instantly, his realization transformed the picture from an inanimate object that simply conveyed information into a semiotic experience, one that for Barthes represented what could only be described as a heightened emotional state.
“Saigon Execution” certainly created that for viewers. Through it, Adams connected me in a rare way with the dead and dying in that war. It had a profound impact on me and countless others.
But on this 10th anniversary of Adams’s death, I’m wondering if he would still say that photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. These images no longer connect me with the dead. They just don’t have the power they had in 1968. They don’t seem to move public opinion, government or the world as they once did. Are we desensitized by the sheer volume of violence? Have we as viewers become empathetically bankrupt?
I wonder because recently we sat and watched a daily stream of horrific images and were insufficiently moved to intervene: Syria massacred its own people; child after child died in Gaza as their homes exploded and crashed, photos showing their tiny bodies piled in morgues; videos showed rows of Iraqi soldiers on their knees who were shot point-blank in the skull, tumbling into freshly dug pits. At the time, we were unmoved.
Maybe our profession and our leaders have failed to protect and preserve the critical role independent war photography plays in our lives and history. And now we have allowed it to fall into the wrong hands.
An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the day Eddie Adams died. Although various sources list the 18th, his family says he died on September 19th, 2004.
Donald R. Winslow is the editor of News Photographer magazine for the National Press Photographers Association (www.nppa.org).
Follow @donaldrwinslow and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
