What Does It Mean to Look At This?

Teju Cole’s column On Photography covers a plethora of subjects and ideas surrounding photography, but there is one piece that caught my eye, one that I am continually drawn to when reading the news. “What Does It Mean To Look At This?” questions the morality and ethics behind photojournalistic ventures and the gruesome images they capture, referring to the acclaimed writer Susan Sontag and her foremost opposition to the defenses of capturing images in wartime that evolved over time with new imagery. This subject is difficult to balance between respect for the subjects and capturing hardship for the world to see, but one that I personally find extremely important in news media and photography in general. Cole makes some interesting points in his piece, ones that bring a new light to such dark imagery the public sees today.

“Why go off to wars or conflict zones at great personal risk to take pictures of people whose lives are in terrifying states of disarray? The answer is often tautological: The images are physically dangerous and psychologically costly to make, and therefore they must be the right images.”

These types of images, although sometimes difficult to view and take in, ultimately bear witness to and give to the subjects suffering in these photographs a hope that their hardship will resonate with the world, and give them relief. These photographs are essential to grounding the rest of the world in harsh reality and connecting them together – as Cole put it, “taking photographs is sometimes a terrible thing to do, but often, not taking the necessary photo, not bearing witness or not being allowed to do so, can be worse.”