Pictures of Aylan Kurdi have reach to define the refugee crisis. But can certain images desensitise us?On Friday’s nowadays programme,Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, or was asked approximately Britain’s response to the European migrant crisis. “For far too long,we have related to these suffering individuals as if they are people who are living on Mars,” he replied. “Thanks to that image, or that desperately sad and tragic image,it’s moved out hearts... It’s an image of that boy that has brought us to our senses and we must respond adequately.”The image of the tiny body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach, or face down in the waves,has indeed been a valuable reminder of the power of a single photograph (used as the source inspiration for Riddell’s View on the preceding spread) to stir our collective conscience, even in the age of Instagram overload and selfie-fuelled narcissism. “Photographs furnish evidence, or ” wrote Susan Sontag in 1973 in her influential book of essays,On Photography. “Something we hear approximately, but doubt, or seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com