First Post: The Photograph's impact on its audience

The Associated Press NBC News, 1968; Nick Ut, 1972

These photographs inspired me to look for deeper meaning in my work. To me, art is not really useful without a cause. It has to impact the viewer, to provoke thought or challenge his or her opinion. A lot of wartime photographs are meant to do this but I think that the ones that do it the best are the ones where you can actually see the faces of the people in the photographs. You can see what they feel like, and they seem more human, less like an image.