What Matters

Photographs That
Can Change the World

EVERY MEDIUM HAS ITS OWN MAGIC, and since its

invention in the early nineteenth century, the
particular power of photography has been its ability
to freeze an instant in time and serve it up for delib-
eration. Pioneering photojournalist Henri Cartier-
CONFEDERATE
Bresson (1908–2004) famously said that great
DEAD AT
photographs capture “the decisive moment.” When
PETERSBURG.
Photograph by used in the service of social and political advocacy, a
Mathew Brady,
1865
series of these decisive moments—a photo-essay—
can catalyze real-world reforms.
Photography is older than audio, video or interactive media, but it
captures decisive moments better than any of them. Since the mid-
to late nineteenth century, photojournalists have created photo-
essays that have exposed unpleasant truths, advanced the public dis-
course and championed social causes.
For real photojournalists, using photography this way is a basic
instinct and an essential element in their code of conduct. In the
1860s, Mathew Brady trundled his wooden camera and tripod out
to Civil War battlefields to make albumen silver prints that belied

by DAVID ELLIOT COHEN

6 INTRODUCTION W H AT M AT T E R S 7
 the glory of war.Three decades later, Dutch immigrant Jacob Riis
used camera and flash powder to expose brutal conditions in New
York’s tenements, and from 1908 to 1912 Lewis Hine, an investiga-
tive photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, criss-
crossed America photographing children as young as three working
twelve-hour factory shifts.
These photojournalistic “muckrakers” (Teddy Roosevelt’s
coinage) actually got results: Riis’ tenement tableaux, initially pub-
lished in Scribner’s Magazine, convinced then New York police com-
missioner Roosevelt to shutter the city’s brutal “police
poorhouses,” and Hine’s photos of juvenile factory workers drove a
nationwide expansion of child labor laws. Later, Joe Rosenthal’s
1945 shot of Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima gave war-weary
P hoto-essays
have the proven
America the will to keep fighting, while Eddie Adams’ famous
1968 photo of Vietnam’s police chief executing a Vietcong ability not only
terrorist—a decisive moment if there ever was one—had the to document
opposite effect, hastening the wind down of an unpopular war. but also to change
Eugene Smith’s early 1970s photos of mercury pollution in
Minamata, Japan, not only buoyed the victims’ lawsuit but stimu-
the course of
lated worldwide environmental awareness. And in 2004 a series of human events.
amateur photos of US jailers humiliating Iraqi prisoners flashed
across the Internet, forcing the closure of Abu Ghraib prison and a
BIBB MILL NO. 1.
reexamination of America’s torture policy.
Photograph by Lewis Hine,
Macon, Georgia, 1909
So over the last century and a half, photo-essays have proven
their ability not only to document but to actually change the
FIVE-CENT LODGING.
Photograph by Jacob Riis,
course of human events. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we ask, “What
New York, 1889 are the essential photo-essays of our time, the pictures that will spark
public discourse and instigate the sort of real-world reform pro-
voked by Riis, Hine, Adams and Smith?”
What Matters attempts to answer that question with eighteen
important photo-essays by this generation’s preeminent photojour-
nalists.The pictures in these essays aren’t necessarily the best photos
ever made—this isn’t a greatest hits album—but they poignantly
address the big issues of our time: global warming, environmental
degradation, AIDS, the global jihad, genocide in Darfur, the
inequitable distribution of global wealth and other equally com-
pelling challenges.

8 INTRODUCTION W H AT M AT T E R S 9
 In an undertaking this ambitious, it is important to understand
what the medium does best, and what it doesn’t do very well at
all. For some very important issues, photojournalism is not the best
way to tell the story. Despite our best efforts, and excellent guid-
ance from a dozen top photo editors from major publications, we
could not find a great photo-essay about the institutionalized

p hotojournalism
works best when
corruption of America’s campaign finance system. It is a crucial
meta-issue that affects many other issues, but it doesn’t lend itself
to pictorial exposition. Then there are other big stories—such as
the so-called digital divide between information “haves” and
it is personal and
“have-nots”—about which we felt sure we’d find great pictures.
specific but still But we couldn’t identify ten or twelve strong images to convey the
conveys a universal story. The point is, we believe that all of the stories in this book
are essential, but we also realize there are other stories, just as
concept.
important, that are best told in other media.
Basically, photojournalism works best when it is personal and
specific but still conveys a universal concept. The world’s premier
conflict photographer and What Matters contributor, James
Nachtwey, puts it this way, “I do not want to show war in general,
nor history with a capital H, but rather the tragedy of a single
person.” Not surprisingly, Nachtwey demonstrates a deep under-
standing of the nature of photojournalism. The best photojournal- books, the photographs drive the story here, while the words STREET EXECUTION,
SAIGON. Photograph by
ism is always personal and specific. That’s why Gene Smith did not explain their larger significance.
Eddie Adams, 1968
photograph pollution worldwide, but rather the devastating effects Here’s another challenge: Brady, Riis and Hines created their
of one particular type of pollution—methyl mercury—on one very groundbreaking photo-essays 100 to 150 years ago, when photog-
small Japanese fishing village. Nevertheless, people who saw Smith’s raphy was still pretty exotic. Only a few trained technicians could
story in Life magazine and in his subsequent book, Minamata, easily operate the machinery, and photographs were still considered
universalized the lesson. In the same way, What Matters presents technological wonders.
very specific pictures of, say, the ecological, cultural and economic But over the last 150 years, making pictures has become
devastation of West Africa’s Niger Delta in order to make much progressively easier and increasingly common.With the recent pro-
larger points about the pernicious effects of petroleum production liferation of digital point-and-shoots and cell-phone cameras, a
and consumption worldwide. significant proportion of young people in wealthier nations carry
What Matters also puts great photo-essays in context by pairing some sort of camera with them at all times.And to a greater or lesser
photographs with insightful commentary by some of the best writ- degree, almost everyone can operate the equipment. Add to that the
ers, thinkers and experts in their fields.These essays provide a much distributive power of the Internet, and you get a world awash in
richer understanding of their topics than could ever be gained from imagery—most of it pretty vacuous.These days imagery permeates
the photos alone. But unlike most magazines, newspapers and our lives. It’s practically wallpaper. And in our image-saturated

10 INTRODUCTION W H AT M AT T E R S 11

Right: world, it’s sometimes difficult to cut through the visual clutter and
RAISING THE FLAG,
shake things up. In his introduction to Minamata, Smith lamented,
IWO JIMA.
“Photography is a small voice at best. Daily we are deluged with
Photograph by Joe Rosenthal, 1945
photography at its worst—until its drone of superficiality threatens
Far right: to numb our sensitivity to the image.” Since Smith published his
SATTAR JABBAR
TORTURED AT ABU GHRAIB
book in 1972, the problem has increased exponentially.
PRISON, BAGHDAD 2004. But certain photographs are still crucial. As What Matters
contributor and climate change guru Bill McKibben says in his
essay, “Theoretical is the word that people in power use to dismiss
anything for which pictures do not exist. It is the reason we don’t
see shots of coffins coming back from Iraq; it’s the reason the only
prison abuse we really know about was at Abu Ghraib. Without
pictures, no uproar; not in a visual age.”
So in McKibben’s words, What Matters contains images that
will create uproar. And as such, many of the pictures in this book
are pretty challenging. Some of them will make you cry; others will
make you sick; and many of them will make you angry . . . which
12 INTRODUCTION
I f we show you these
photographs, we believe
that you will react with
outrage… create an
uproar…take action.
is our intent. We believe that modern-day hero-photojournalists
such as Sebastião Salgado, Jim Nachtwey, Ed Kashi, Tom Stoddart
and Stephanie Sinclair create photo-essays that can actually grab
the world’s attention; that their photographs are so transcendent,
so compelling, if we show them to you, you will react with outrage
. . . and create an uproar. And if you do want to take action, What
Matters provides a menu of resources, web links and effective
actions you can take to help right now. If, on the other hand, you
look at these grim stories and think:“What’s the use? The world is
irredeemably screwed up,” it is good to remember that we actually
did abolish slavery and child labor in the United States; we abol-
ished apartheid in South Africa; we defeated the Nazis; we pulled
out of Vietnam; and Minamata Bay was eventually cleaned up. As
the saying goes,“All great social change seems impossible until it is
inevitable.” So please look at these photographs. Read the words.
And then, if the spirit moves you, do something . . . even something
small . . . to help repair the world.
W H AT M AT T E R S 13