There is one image which has stood out above the many which have filled our news feeds of late.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Evan Vucci captured Donald Trump on July 13 moments after the attempted assassination of the former president.
The image shows Trump punching his fist into the air against the backdrop of the American flag and with blood across his face.
It portrays him as an American hero ready to fight, and many believe the image could have changed the course of the country’s history.
Rather than keeping his head down and allowing his security to move him to safety, Trump stopped just long enough for the ever-ready photojournalists to do their job.
(Image: Evan Vucci)
We must note however, that since this photograph was taken, at the time of writing, Kamala Harris has leaped above Biden’s poll count.
Photographs become memory. They are how we remember and understand events and so here we are reminded of famed images of past political assassinations. Abraham Zapruder’s blurred, panicked moment of President Kennedy slumped over towards Jackie, mortally wounded during motorcade in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963, to note just one.
Vucci’s image will join the archive of news images representing prominent moments throughout the last century. Great moments and vast periods of time, boiled down to one image and one fraction of a second.
The Vietnam War was famously called ‘the first televised war’. Unprecedented access for journalists and advances in communications technology meant this conflict was reported every day on newspaper front pages and TV screens in the US and Europe like never before.
Why is it, then, that there are only a handful of defining images of this decades-long conflict?
Nick Ut’s photograph of nine-year old Phan Thị Kim Phúc fleeing an air strike which had struck Vietnamese civilians is argued to have contributed to the ending of the war. The Napalm Girl image shows the speed and horror of war, holding the same fearful pain as the day it was published on the front page of the New York Times in June 1972.
Kevin Carter’s image of a vulture watching a starving child, taken in Sudan in March 1993, contributed to a ripple of money and awareness raised for aid after its publication, also in The New York Times.
Immediately upon publication Carter was confronted with the question of whether he should have taken this photograph or put down his camera and helped the starving child and criticised for his choice. He won a Pulitzer Prize for this photograph in 1994 but died by suicide four months later.
Aside from the image of Trump, these are some of the images on display in The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project at the Sainsbury Centre, which explores the impact and influence photography has had on shaping – and in some cases distorting the narrative of major global events.
(Image: Don McCullin)
Featuring more than 100 works by legendary photographers including Don McCullin, Stuart Franklin, Robert Capa and Dorothea Lange, as well as modern practitioners, this extensive exhibition charts a global century of iconic documentation and manipulation.
Without living memory or historical context in years to come, Vucci’s image appears on the surface to show an injured victim powerfully defiant.
So, how can one image represent a single significant event if misinterpretation and misunderstanding can be such a dangerous thing? Well, it simply can’t.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here