More "inspiring", less "witnessing"

In photojournalism it's perhaps the business of "witnessing" stuff who's time is up. This is no longer enough - it now implies a certain passiveness and arrogance - as if the photographer was an angel peering into humanity, governed by different laws.

Images conceived to shock viewers out of their complacency seem now to have the opposite effect: they only add to the general sense of jadedness and helplessness people feel about events in the broader world.

Aestheticised horror pushes the subject matter out far beyond the point where "us" becomes "them" and empathy, overstretched, recoils.

(sorry, I can't bring myself to increase the size of the above James Nachtwey picture)

Subtler, softer stories are emerging that try to bring their subject-matter closer to viewers. By focusing more on commonalities than stark differences, by including the poetry and uniqueness of life in a certain place, they show "life elsewhere" as being not so fundamentally, irreparably different to life closer by.

We are at the awkward, early beginnings of exploring many new registers in storytelling with images. People in Western countries have developed a terribly warped sense of the broader world, and photographers have a large burden of blame for that. They are doing well to start showing it in all its shades and complexities. Rather than adopting a stern objective stance with its implied omniscience, they are less afraid to put more of themselves into the equation and to try to inspire, instead aiming to force a single, violent response to what they have witnessed.