The power of a single image

I have passively followed the European migrant crisis for some weeks. Grazing news stories. But, not having any real understanding of the scope or desperation of things. Seeing the stories but not feeling them. This past Tuesday I attended a lecture by Lyse Doucete of the BBC News. She woke me up to the size of this story. To the amount of human desperation and suffering. She woke me up intellectually.

And then the photo of three year old Alan Kurdi goes viral and our political leaders are being pressed on the campaign trail for answers. What is Canada going to do? The photo woke me up emotionally. It’s no longer a story of statistics and numbers. It’s now a story about children and their parents.

The photo can be seen HERE. The actual photo is 3/4 of the way down the page.

Photography is very, very powerful in its simplicity. Images can say everything quickly and emotionally. One look at the photo and almost every parent in the world instantly understands the desperation facing Alan Kurdi’s family. Facing his mom. Here is a child that I instantly understand to be like mine – innocent, loving, and hopeful. And, here is a mother so desperate to bring her children into a better world that she risked her life, and her children’s lives, to take them there. Here is a mother so desperate that she does exactly the opposite of what parents are supposed to do – she puts her children in harm’s way. And, I instantly understand her thinking. I have never faced her peril but I understand her plight because I understand that I would do the same thing in the same situation.

It is a single photograph that wakes our empathy and our sympathy.