ABSTRACT
We live in a visual age. Images shape international events and our understanding of them. Photographs, cinema and television influence how we view and approach phenomena as diverse as war, humanitarian disasters, protest movements, financial crises and election campaigns. Politicians have been acutely aware of this at least since shocking images of the Vietnam War influenced domestic and international support for US foreign policy (Kennedy 2008). The UN Secretary General regularly urges photojournalists to produce more images, particularly of atrocities that seem to exist in silence and demand urgent action (Pronk 2005; Devereux 2010: 124–34).
