Originally Posted by bdcolen This will make some of you crazy. But in a way, you don't need to know 'their side' of the story, particularly in the case of Nachtwey. Needing to know 'their side of the story' is an example of this crazy idea today that every dispute, every disagreement, every story today has two morally equivalent, factually valid "sides." Well, it t'ain't so. The world is round, it is not flat, even though there are some people to this day who contend it is. And when it comes to journalism, photo or otherwise, there are ethics and standards, rights and wrongs. And no amount of equivicating, no amount of rationalizing, makes violating those standards, makes wrong right. Sorry.

I will have to disagree. You are saying that there are objective truths, i.e. the Earth is round, but life situation is more complex than that. I am not defending Natchwey, but for argument sake, what if he really thought that some good would come out of it? How? I do not know, hence I am not defending him. Can such possibility exist? Yes, just because you and I cannot think of it, doesn't mean the possibility does not exist.

What I would love to see is a response from Nachtwey, then we can at least judge his (public) rationales, if any. If he remains silence in the matter, certainly then I would presume he is more "guilty" than innocent.

The more I think about the Assad family shoot, the more I think that it does represent an important component of the situation in Syria. True, it does not depict directly the horrors of war; but it does show how indifferent (at a minimum) and sheltered the first family is. I think anyone with an ounce of thoughtfulness will see it for what it is--a propaganda piece--and take it as yet another example of how dictators can fully buy into their own stories. After all, we would not even be having this discussion if this was a shoot of David and Victoria Beckham, because their lifestyle is not a direct consequence of other peoples' suffering.

It reminds me of similar studies of other dictators--Idi Amin and Ferdinand Marcos come to mind--who were very out of touch with the world around them and their respective roles in creating and supporting it.

I guess I have to ask myself who would believe the story of this family that (I suspect) the Assads hoped would be told by these photographs. Certainly no one in Syria; probably no one who pays any attention to the situation there. In this sense, it reminds me of some 'documentary' films that the Nazis made in the Warsaw Ghetto, which were extremely powerful precisely because of the lies that were portrayed.

B.D.:

You know I love you.

If we did not have photographs of, for example, Mao Zedong we wouldn't be able to gauge his insanity, ruthlessness, and disdain for humanity.

HCB took photos of Gandhi. I think Gandhi is awesome, but does everyone? No. The guy who shot him thinks he sucks.

What if photography had been widely viable during American chattel slavery? Would photographs of George Washington now be seen as a testament to a photographer gone rogue?

Bashar al-Assad is, as far as I know, a pawn of a terrible, genocidal junta. Agreed.

We as a people, humans, need to see what is happening in the world. It makes what al-Assad is doing all the more clear.

We cannot see what we cannot see.

True enough, Damon. But a very important point to keep in mind here is that these were photos not for Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, but rather for VOGUE, a publication that glorifies the rich and their trappings. It is a publication whose photography beautifies, rather than exposes, it's subjects.