Seen a lot of good photo-reportage here but frankly it all pales to an insignificant blur faced with the latest picture story to arrive in our newspapers.

This is truly a PICTURE story – not many pix and they have been heavily edited, but what there is carries the story without further need for words.
(News is transient though and in two months we won’t even remember this story unless people act upon it.)

 Three year olds die every day.
The world is full of death traps for kids; so many diseases, bad people doing bad stuff,
But we don’t really give a damn – do we ?

We see the pictures all the time.http://www.visapourlimage.com/index.do
How can we care for every poor child that dies an untimely death ?
There are thousands of them.
Poor little mites who’ve just learnt to walk and talk and become aware of the world they live in.
Just snatched away without a by or leave.
Your gods are good at killing kids, aren’t they ?
Those whom the gods love etc  …Well , bollocks to that.
This is something we can do something about.

This kid, Aylan, is not just a kid, he is a symptom and more importantly an icon.
I can’t look at this picture without feeling guilty, angry, and somehow responsible.

If he’d died on a beach with no one to see he’d be a simple statistic.
But we have been forced to see the reality of this statistic.
Lying face down in the curling, gentle surf.
His image hits us. Moves us.

He may have been a good boy …Loved by his family – certainly.
He may have grown up to become someone famous .. Cured cancer, ended poverty … Anything.
It doesn’t matter anymore
Aylan is dead.
A sad lonely death because his parents wanted something better for him.
They had the nerve to want their children to have a better life. 

But isn’t that what we all want ?

So as an icon this picture is important.
Aylan himself isn’t important – he’s just another dead three year old to join the ever mounting body count of those who shouldn’t have died.
We are made to see dead children almost every day in the news, so why is he so special ?

It’s the picture that is important because it has made people aware.
The simple banal fact that someone focused on him lying there and someone else decided that this was a story.
It makes you sit up, and say ” that’s awful …what can we do ?”

I don’t know what we should do
That’s not my job
That’s why we elect politicians – to do the hard stuff for us.
All we can do is put pressure on them to do “what is right”.

Anyway my vote for the most important picture story this year goes to whoever took the shots of little Aylan.
It was a pro, judging by the lens choices, but that’s not at all important, is it ?
That series of images could’ve been made by any citizen journalist on his iPhone.
It would have been equally important as long as he’d maintained the quiet poignant tragedy of Aylan’s death.

I’ve seen a lot of important and moving photography this week but for me, as a single life changing image, this will take some beating.
An image we can’t turn our backs on.
This remains a lesson for us all.
How you interpret and use it is up to you. 

Good night