As you may already be starting to forget, last week’s news was (briefly) dominated with horrifying images of a small Syrian boy.
Omran Daqneesh, was blanketed in a thick crust of blood and dust, staring blankly ahead, after being plucked from the aftermath of an airstrike on the rebel-held city of Aleppo.
It is a gut-wrenching image which went round the world. And as a result, our interest in Syria was abruptly reawakened.
Just five years old, Omran has only known the misery of war. So we thought about him, we pitied him, we cursed Assad, and then we went about our daily business.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – temporarily in charge of the country – did his bit, calling for a halt to the fighting in Aleppo so food and medical supplies could reach the city.
“The whole world is horrified by the suffering of the people of Aleppo – the bombing of innocent civilians, the murder of defenceless children,” said Johnson, “the fighting must stop now”.
Just as our interest was sparked from its soporific nest, it was quickly extinguished. Something else happened. The world moved on.
And this cycle – a shocking photograph, temporary interest, a sprinkling of pathos and then oblivion – is becoming increasingly common.
Remember Aylan Kurdi?
In September last year, a photograph similarly caught the attention of the media: the three-year-old Syrian’s lifeless body washed up on the shores of Turkey after a failed attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
The image provoked thousands, if not millions, of words to be printed, promised and tweeted in the European and North American press.
The photograph of Kurdi was unquestionably distressing. Former Prime Minister David Cameron assured us that “as a father, I felt deeply moved”. He later promised that Britain would welcome “thousands” more refugees.
David Cameron "deeply moved" by pictures of Aylan Kurdi, says Britain to fulfil its "moral responsibilities" https://t.co/tpzh2fhrPF
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) September 3, 2015
But what exactly did we think was happening in Syria before these images were brought to our attention?
History proves that we need images to engage emotionally with places or situations from which we are detached.
From the dark ages to the Renaissance, social order was maintained by vast and horrifying mosaics of heaven and hell in churches, stretching from floor to ceiling – an aesthetic proof of Christianity and life after death.
The cynics among us would call the necessity for visual evidence Schadenfreude. But images undoubtedly rouse consciousness in a way that the written or spoken word does not.
Consider the 1972 photograph of the young Vietnamese girl running, naked, burned and desperate, away a napalm attack. The image was widely credited with turning American public opinion against the Vietnam War.
l'incroyable destin de Kim Phuc: la survivante du napalm https://t.co/pQb6hPSheh pic.twitter.com/LOLOhCIwsn
— L'important (@Limportant_fr) August 11, 2016
In 1993, the photograph of an emaciated Sudanese toddler, crippled with hunger, eyed up by a nearby vulture, triggered humanitarian concern for that nation’s plight, which by then had been going on for ten years.
Vulture Stalking a Child-In March 1993, photographer Kevin Carter snapped the haunting photograph in Sudan. pic.twitter.com/CaEjZKX0V6
— ICRJ (@ICRJco) May 14, 2015
More often than not, though, incidents occur which do not have the advantage of being reinforced by a shocking image.
In August of last year, the decomposing bodies of 71 Syrian refugees – men, women and children – were discovered in an abandoned truck in Austria. There were, perhaps mercifully, no photographs. So we turned the pages of our newspapers and moved on.
In the digital era we all have free and ready access to the opinions and sentiments of others. And can voice our own views just as freely.
But, in our medieval way, we still want the sight of blood before we will contemplate acting on it.
