Do Photographs Change the World?

Can photography change the world? I believe that yes it can. The past century has been full of photographs that have helped spark movements, ignite revolutions to overthrow oppressive governments, and helped direct aid towards the relief for millions of people who have been stricken by famine, disease, and natural disasters. There are so many pictures that have helped change the world for the better that everyone has a different picture that comes their mind when they are asked the question can photography change the world. If I had to choose a picture that had a profound effect on my life it would have to be the picture of Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk who lit himself on fire in the middle of a Saigon intersection to show protest against the South Vietnamese Ngô Đình Diệm administration, which was persecuting Buddhists all across the country.

Photo by: Malcolm Browne

Image Source: http://www.naked-web.co.uk/2010/10/top-10-photographs-that-changed-the-world/

I can't remember the first time I saw this photo, but it shocked me deeply. It is one of the few pictures that made me instantly look up the photograph in order to learn more about where it came from and what was the story behind it. I could scarcely imagine the kind of oppression that the Buddhists were facing that caused them to go so far as to light themselves on fire and sit there until they perished. This photograph, for me, really put into perspective the power of oppression and how far people will go in order to show resistance against it.

For human beings planet Earth has always been our home, and very people can say that they have completely left Earth and gone into outer space, let alone can say that they have been on the Moon. William Anders picture taken  from the moon during the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon on December 24th, 1968. Once the image came back to Earth and it was broadcasted and printed in news papers all around the world, people were mesmerized by the beauty of it and what the planet we all call home looked like from a never-before seen perspective. As a kid, like everyone else, I've always been astounded by the idea of space and the possibility of traveling through it. Despite the vastness of space, simply traveling to the Moon for the first time, which compared to the rest of space the distance from the Earth to the Moon pales in comparison, captivated the imagination of everyone involved in the project and everyone around the globe.

 Photo by: William Anders

Image Source: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html

The argument over whether words or photographs change history more than the other is a deep and highly thought-provoking debate. The issue, when it comes to the side of words changing history, is that words can only describe so much, there is not infinite space in which enough words can be put in order to describe the situation. As the saying goes, a picture's worth a thousand words. It's not physically possible to put a thousand words in the space that a photograph takes, so the words are not able to put into detail as much as the photograph can. Life Magazine created a book to tackle the very question do photographs change the world. For this book they created a list of 100 photographs that contained emotion-driven imagery. For the second picture in line-up they used a picture of three dead American soldiers on a beach in Papua New Guinea. Their explanation for the addition of this photo is as follows:

"“Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore?” Among the reasons: “words are never enough . . . words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.”"

Furthermore, pictures often bring a sense of humanity to a topic. It is much easier to feel a sense of compassion towards an issue when we are able to vividly the harmful effects of that situation.

Jonathan Klein of Getty Images said during his Ted Talk: "Images often push us to question our core beliefs and our responsibilities to each other."

Despite the First Amendment granting freedom of the press or media, there is still a lack of free movement within the world of journalism. One specific example of this is the aforementioned ban on the video or photographical documentation of the caskets of soldiers returning home who were killed in combat which was uplifted in 2009 by President Barrack Obama. Due to the restrictions placed on professional and career photojournalists, citizen journalists are becoming more and more common these days, especially since the technology in cell phone cameras these days is becoming more advanced. A great example of how citizen journalists who use their cell phones and then social media as their outlets to spread their photographs and videos is all the chaos that happened in Ferguson, Missouri. Almost all of the popular footage that came out of the Michael Brown slaying and the riots that ensued was due to video footage and photographs taken by citizens using their cell phones.

A quote from The Guardian on the topic of the Ferguson situation perfectly describes the relationship social media and cell phones are forming with the field of photojournalism: "In Ferguson, Missouri this week, the public has turned the notion of “see something, say something” back on the state, via a digital tool of enormous power: online pictures and video."

Finally, the media shown on TV, what is read in the news papers, and what is published online are controlled by just six companies. The six companies in question are GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. These six companies control 90% of the news outlets today in America. 

A statistic given by Business Insider:  "232 media executives control the information diet of 277 million Americans - That's 1 media exec to 850,000 subscribers"

Unfortunately, media consolidation is a huge issue, in 1983 media was regulated by fifty companies, and now in 2011 it's down to just six. The revenue for these six corporations in 2010 was $275.9 billion dollars. Media consolidation is a big reason why citizen journalism is really starting to take off, because people are able to take back control of what goes across the news feed of people across the United States.