Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]

 Virtually the whole of society believes in what they believe not by direct experience but by what they’ve been told. We photographers are in this exalted, privileged position of actually going out to find out for ourselves, and that’s why we’re so dangerous. Because we were there. We saw what happened. 
 [Photojournalism] really is the only branch of photography that’s a credit to our profession. We see, we understand; we see more, we understand more. 
 I believe photography owes its status to achieving what no other medium can, capturing the reality of the defining moments of human existence as decisively as possible. 
 The twentieth century was the time of photography, when almost everything of importance was recorded and considered true because it was photographed. Nowadays nearly anyone can produce a photograph of Ladybird Johnson standing on the grassy knoll with a smoking gun in her hand and no one can prove it’s a fake. 
 What we get to think and know about the world is in the hands of a very few... A truly informed public is antithetical to the interests of modern consumer capital. 
 The problem with photography is that you can decontextualize war. What does a picture of a wounded body, or a mother clasping her wounded child mean? Why is it happening? I want to know that. I’m not satisfied just photographing little sorts of visual climaxes to a conflict. I want to know what led up to it and what’s going to happen next. 
 I’ve always understood the “decisive moment” to be the moment in which one captures the significance of a situation, and yes, in the blink of an eye. When one achieves this, looking through the viewfinder, the reward is an on-the-spot confirmation that amounts to a visual orgasm. 
 My view is that a photograph that does not need a caption is a good photograph, but a caption can enhance its meaning. I avoid simply describing the image. My Fleet Street training emphasized the “five Ws” of journalism—who, what, why, where, and when? My favorite, to this day, is “why.” 
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