Who hasn’t taken a picture? Most everyone has some form of social media and has taken a photo and posted it and has received praise for how good it looked that day. Well, for photojournalists, that isn’t always the case. They may post pictures on the web and show a story they covered and receive praise for it. But they have to sometimes go to some of the worst natural disasters and get photos of them. “You rage inside at the helplessness. To try to deal with it, you seek out elements of humanity and courage.”—Carol Guzy.
One of the most famous example of photojournalism to ever be taken is the photo by Joe Rosenthal of the Marines going through rubble to put up the American flag in 1945 on Iwo Jima. This picture shows the determination of these men to go through all this rubble and devastation from war to put the flag up. They took this extra time to see that it was put up for the world to see. They wanted people to know that they won that battle.
There was a photo that was taken in 1969 called “ The Execution of a Viet Cong Guerilla” by Eddie Adams that was quite shocking. It was during one of Adams’ many coverages of war and shows one ugly side of it. It shows two men, one holding and aiming a gun at the other’s head. The man who has the gun pointed at him is bound from behind and has blood dripping from his mouth. He looks scared, sad, tired and angry all at once. In the background are some soldiers who appear to be laughing as a man’s life is about to be taken away. All of this was happening in the street, where anyone could see it. The prisoner was being executed because that morning, he murdered 12 people. This journalist captured this photo the second before the prisoner’s life ended. It shows what someone’s last minute on Earth can be, full of fear and hatred and it shows the revenge the executioner is able to take on him.
Nick Ut took a photo in 1973 that became a wildly memorable image called “Napalm girl.” It shows children running down the street crying and in pain. One child stands out. It’s a little girl who is naked and running down the street crying out because she is burned by napalm. There are soldiers in the background walking behind the children looking for the enemy, not concerned about the children. This shows the aftermath of a napalm bomb that the U.S. dropped in Vietnam during their war. Napalm is a substance that is used to make atomic bombs. It’s deadly and if a human is in close enough range, it can vaporize them. It’s highly radioactive. Some people who were in contact with it have received cancer diagnoses and others still have scars from where it burnt them. The photo shows that while napalm takes an enemy out, it also affects innocent people like the little girl.
The Colombian mudslide in 1986 was tragic. Twenty thousand people were buried alive in mud. One photo shows the desperation those people felt as they tried to get out. Carol Guzy took many photos of the mudslide and named it “Buried Alive.” All you can see in one picture is an arm popping out from the mud. It appears to have stopped moving when the owner tried to take another swipe at the mud, to get free. Another picture shows a girl in the mud and water, with her head barely hanging above the water. People around her are holding her head up because if they don’t, her head will go underwater. She was talking to the people around her and they did everything they could to get her out but could not. This photo shows the ugly, dark side of photojournalism. It shows how awful the situation was and what rescuers and families saw while looking for family members.
William Snyder captured a photo in 1991 that shows a nurse in a Romanian orphanage. She is holding something in a pot and has two children. One she is holding and for the other she is holding a cup so that he can drink. Other children look on at her as she shows her determination to make sure they are fed and taken care of. One child is looking off into the distance, almost as though he is wondering where his parents are or if he will ever be adopted. This picture captured how hard this nurse was working to ensure that these children were taken care of. And it shows one child yearning to know where his family is. Are they dead? Did they not want him? Where were they? The child is pondering all those questions and appears to be lost in space.
There are many photos that show the beautiful side of life, but often those don’t win Pulitzers. The ones that win Pulitzers can show the ugly side of life: the man before he was executed, the little girl naked and crying out in pain from napalm, the arm that stopped moving before it could finish digging the rest of its body out. The pictures are hard to look at and even harder to take, but they get the message across. They show what happens when a mudslide strikes and buries 20,000 people. They show what napalm did to young children. They also show some of the happiest moments in some lives, however, such as when the men raised the American flag in battle during World War II. As John White said, “Everyone has a story. And we sing their song. If we don’t do it—-if the journalist doesn’t do it—-who’s going to do it?”
