Dead Child on the Beach, Dying Child in the Desert: The Power of Images to Move Us

If ever anyone wondered about the power of a single image, the tragic photo of the dead Syrian child on the beach provides a chilling and moving answer.

The photo has appeared in media and social media around the world. It has not only affected people emotionally, it has also changed the nature of the Canadian election.  
(The child, whose name is Aylan Kurdi, was 3. Also drowned was his mother, Reham, and brother, Gulip, 5.)

This isn’t the first image of the terrible refugee crisis in the region. Many photos of crowds of refugees walking to Europe or crowded into small boats have been published. They have had the power to overwhelm, but perhaps not move us the way this image has.

And why is that? The fact that the child is dead is one reason. How small he is is another. And the fact it is a child—an innocent.

It’s unfortunate that it takes such a tragic incident to capture the world’s attention. But it’s perfectly understandable, as I wrote earlier about why our brains make us want to help one child, but not millions of people.

The photo reminds me of another seminal photo from 1993 by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kevin Carter (above).

Carter spent much of his career recording the horror of famine and war in Africa. In 1993 he took a photo in Sudan of a vulture stalking a dying child. 

Like the photo of Ayan dead on the beach, the photo of the vulture and child came to encapsulate the tragedy of war and hunger in Sudan and helped shape both the public discourse and the response. 

For the photo, Carter won a Pulitzer prize. A year later, at age 33, he killed himself. 

In his suicide note, he said, among other things, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain . . . of starving or wounded children.”

Taking photos like that affects the photographer and the viewer. It affects us all at a visceral level.

But will it move us to action? That is the big question. And what action should that be?

That’s also a good question. Making a donation to your favourite charity to help people affected by the crisis in Syria would be a good place to start.