Susan Sotang offers a bleak look at photographic journalists, and the impact of their work. However I think this is more to do with how the photo is viewed rather than the image itself. In class on Tuesday, a warning was posted on the door. It instructed us to take a deep breathe before we came in and watched todays screening. Warned us of images of death and famine. In a magazine it is easy to flip to another page,  In a dark classroom, where images are projected on the whiteboard and the tv screens it is hard to look away. You focus on the gasps, you feel the uncomfortable tension radiating off the bodies around you. Atrocity is easier to dismiss alone.

How are these images really made ordinary – if not through constant exposure is it through their commodification. Does the same to “deaden the conscience” to view these works in galleries and does it change when we view this beside another, with a hand over yours as you turn the page?

How do we create an image to impact people alone, without anyone to measure their reactions to?
Can we really communicate anything anymore if we as an audience are overwhelmed with signs and images?

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/sebastiao-salgado-kuwait