"The omission of Gaza's recent bombardment from your selection of iconic images of the 21st century is puzzling (The sight of it is still shocking': 46 photos that tell the story of the century so far, 27 December). What about photos of the skeletal remains of Gaza's landscape, after being bombarded with thousands of tons of explosives, using artificially intelligent software that is a harbinger of all our tomorrows?"
"What about the demonstrations across cities and campuses, or pensioners and priests opposing starvation and genocide being handcuffed and bundled into police vans? Or 18-month-old malnourished Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq being held by his mother in a nappy made out of a black plastic bag? Or the assembled photos by the Gaza Media Center of 238 journalists killed in the campaign, the highest number ever recorded in any conflict? These are seared into our collective memories as much as photos of Ukraine, particularly for billions of people in the global south. The photo that was included of the West Bank separation barrier was no substitute for those devastating images."
"Your picture special includes a photograph of migrants stuck on the wall around Melilla, a Spanish exclave in Morocco, showing a golf links on the Spanish side of the wall complete with players intent on their game. This reminded me of a poem from the early 20th century by American social reformer Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn: The golf links lie so near the mill / That almost every day / The laboring children can look out / And see the men at play. Not a perfect analogy, but then it's an imperfect world."
Omission of Gaza bombardment imagery from a set of iconic 21st-century photographs is described as puzzling. Missing images include skeletal remains of Gaza’s landscape after bombardment with thousands of tons of explosives and AI-processed visualizations. Missing civic responses include demonstrations across cities and campuses and pensioners and priests opposing starvation and genocide being handcuffed and bundled into police vans. Missing personal suffering includes an 18-month-old malnourished child held in a nappy made from a black plastic bag. The Gaza Media Center’s assembled photos of 238 journalists killed constitute the highest recorded toll and are seared into collective memories, particularly across the global south. The West Bank barrier image is deemed an inadequate substitute, and a Melilla migrant photo evokes Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn’s poem about laboring children watching men at play.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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