Have you ever heard of a war photographer who picked a rifle and joined the fight? War photographers are disengaged from their subject to a fault. That’s how we have the striking pictures of a girl covered in blood of her parents, or the first proof of an ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
Should the photographer help the innocent? Fight for them, comfort them, share her food with them? Why is she just standing there, hiding behind the lenses of her camera?
But isn’t she already helping by showing the world what war looks like? We would never know if it wasn’t for her detachment. Detachment is how she expresses her deep-felt care.
We live in an age of rapid cultural shifts, primitive politics, and conflicting ideologies. Everyone tells you to pick a side. Their side. Many writers do.
But you have a choice. You can make art that stands for something if you genuinely believe in a cause. Or you can remain neutral, and show us the world the way it really is.
