Susie Linfield
[Writer and critic, New York, lives in New York.]

 Today, looking at images from Sierra Leone or the Congo, one can feel horror, disgust, and great sadness—but what to do in response is much less apparent. Which of the twelve militias now fighting in the Congo do you support? Visual atrocity is much clearer today, but we no longer have the political clarity to accompany it. 
 Without a political context, it is impossible to understand a photograph. This is true even—or especially—of political photographs themselves. 
 Because children are vulnerable and blameless—the purest victims—depictions of their suffering have an extraordinarily visceral impact. And so they should. It is not naiveté or sentimentality to be moved, pierced, or outraged by such images. At the same time, photographs of children are no more meaningful—that is, politically explanatory—than any others. 
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