From Gaza to Vietnam, what is the value of a photo? | Opinions

This month, the Palestinian photographer Samar Abu Elouff won the World Press Photo of the Year Award of 2025 for his image entitled Mahmoud Ajjour, nine years old, tasks last year for the New York Times.

Ajjour had his two arms blown by an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ongoing genocide has now killed at least 52,365 Palestinians since October 2023. In the award -winning photograph, the head and torso without arms of the child they are thrown in the partial shadow, his intense intense intense in his vacuum.

Speaking recently with Al Jazeera, Ajjour recalled his reaction when his mother informed him that he had lost his arms: “I began to cry. I was very sad and my mental state was very bad.” Then he was forced to undergo surgery without anesthesia, an agreement that has been even the course in Gaza due to the criminal blockage of Israel’s medical supplies and all other materials necessary for human survival. “I couldn’t bear the pain, I was shouting very strong. My voice filled the halls.”

According to Abu Eloff, the first tortured question that the child asked his mother was: “How can I hug you?”

Undoubtedly, ABU Eluff’s Ajjour portrait encapsulates the cataclysmic suffering that Israel has inflicted, with the complete support of the United States, on the children of the Gaza Strip. In mid -December 2023, only two months after the launch of the genocidal assault, the United Nations Fund for the Nation reported that some 000 children in Gaza had already lost one or both legs.

We quickly advance until the present moment and the UN warning, at the beginning of April, that at least 100 children are killed or wounded daily in the besieged territory. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but how many images are needed to represent the genocide?

Meanwhile, when the prosecuted slaughter did not decrease in Gaza, today, April 30, marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, another bloody historical episode in which the United States played a huge role in mass murder. As is the case, a nine -year -old boy also became the face and body of that war: Kim Phuc, victim of a Napalm attack with the supply of the United States, the South Vietnam’s Trang Bang village vietnam in June 1972.

Nick Ut, a Vietnamese photographer of Associated Press, took the now iconic image of Phuc as he ran naked along the way, his skin burned and his face the image of apocalyptic agony. The photo, which is official entitled The Terror of War, but is known as Napalm Girl, the World Press Photo of the Year Award cattle in 1973.

In an interview with CNN on the 50th anniversary of photography in 2022, Phuc reflected on the time of the attack: “”[S]Uddenly, was the fire everywhere, and the fire burns my clothes … I still remember what I thought. I thought: ‘Oh, my God, I burned, I will be ugly and people will see me [in a] Different form. “

This, obviously, is nothing of a child or adult who has to endure, physical or psychological, in any remotely civilized world. After spending 14 months in the hospital, Phuc continued to suffer from extreme pain, suicidal thoughts and shame for having the photo of his naked and mutilated body exposed so that everyone sees it.

And yet, Napalm was one of the many weapons in a tool game backed by the United States designed to make the planet safe for capitalism incinerating and otherwise giving human bodies. To this day, Vietnamese are mutilated and killed by the unexplained leftovers of millions of tons of artillery that the United States fell on the country during the war.

The lethal defoliant agent Orange, which the United States used to saturate Vietnam’s stripes, also remains responsible for all kinds of birth defects and death of half a century after the end of the war.

In her 1977 book about photography, the late American writer Susan Sontag considered the function of images such as UT: “Photographs like the one made by the cover of most newspapers in the world in 1972: a nake To hundreds of war, probably to the war of war.

Leaving aside public repulsion, of course, barbarities backed by the United States in Vietnam continued for three more years after UT published their photo. Now, the fact that almost all images of Gaza Strip could be labeled as the terror of war simply confirms that barbarism remains a fast business.

And in the current era of social networks, in which both images and videos are reduced to rapid fire images for momentary consumption, the desensitizing effect on the public cannot be underestimated, only when we are talking about kildrn of nine years.

In an Instagram post on April 18, Abu Elouff wrote: “I always do it, and I still do, I want to capture the photo that this war would stop, which would stop the murder, death, starvation.”

She is used to beg: “But if our photos cannot stop all this tragedy and horror, what is the value of a photo? What is the image you expect to see to understand what is happening inside Gaza?”

And in that gloomy note, could ask a similar question: what is the value of an opinion article?

The opinions expressed in this article are typical of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.