EA/Clinton Institute Special: The Photos of the Decade

REUTERS/Juan Medina

Starting today, Enduring America teams up with the Photography and International Conflict website of the Clinton Institute for American Studies in a special project on "The Photos of the Decade". Each day for 10 days we will post a photograph from a year in the decade, and we will invite readers to submit their own memorable photographs. We will then continue the discussion until readers select The Photograph of the Decade.

Photos of the Decade: 2009 (Neda)
Photos of the Decade: 2008 (Sichuan Earthquake)
Photos of the Decade: 2007 (Bhutto Assassination)
Photos of the Decade: 2006 (Immigrant on a Beach)
Photos of the Decade: 2005 (Tsunami)
Photos of the Decade: 2004 (Abu Ghraib)
Photos of the Decade: 2003 (Bombs on Baghdad)
Photos of the Decade: 2002 (Daniel Pearl)
Photos of the Decade: 2001 (9-11 Moment)
Photos of the Decade: 2000 (West Bank)

Liam Kennedy, the Director of the Clinton Institute, writes:

These photographs depict significant moments and events in the decade 2000-2009. The selection is not intended to denote the "best" news photographs but to provide a visual iconography of the period, one which may be suggestive as much for what it excludes as it includes.


All these photographs represent the macabre subject-matter that takes on iconic significance: death, destruction, and bodies in pain. With the passing of time, our viewing of these images may shift as their immediacy is displaced by narratives of recent history. For example, we may now see the image from 2000, depicting Palestinians attempting to escape tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers, as symbolic not only of the moment of the "Second Intifada" but of rippling violence and unrest within and well beyond that region through the decade.

These photographs also indicate some of the significant changes in visual media technologies during the decade. Photographs taken by camera-phones or re-mediated as frame grabs from videos are now commonly "newsworthy" and even iconic. Enabled by the technologies, much news imagery is now being produced by amateur photographers and "citizen journalists", a remarkable expansion of global capacities for visually documenting war, conflict and human rights abuses.

There are competing views on the effects of this increased flow of images. The more optimistic tend to argue that visual technologies have globalised human conscience, expanding our understanding of the human and of claims of the vulnerability of others. Pessimists point to continuing inequalities in media production and distribution and refer to a growing consumption of suffering and an accompanying "compassion fatigue".

At the heart of these differing perspectives is the issue of the ethical (and political) function of the image as a mode of evidentiary representation that bears witness to the suffering and degradation of others. That function is at issue in every one of these images. just as it was at issue in every one of the images recently emanating from Haiti.