Can Photography Chance the Way Politicians Think?

[DPNow]

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And with only two months to go before the Copenhagen climate change summit, CIWEM is hoping that the Environmental Photographer of the Year Exhibition will persuade politicians to take the urgent and decisive action needed to combat climate change

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[Patrick]

Re: Can Photography Chance the Way Politicians Think?

Here is a summary or excerpt from an article that has just been published on DPNow:

And with only two months to go before the Copenhagen climate change summit, CIWEM is hoping that the Environmental Photographer of the Year Exhibition will persuade politicians to take the urgent and decisive action needed to combat climate change

Click read the whole article...

Yes photography can influence politicians but only through public reaction to images that move them.
I am thinking in particular the image of the little Vietnamese girl burned by napalm published world wide. The one single picture summed up the horror of the Vietnamese war. It moved people every where in the world at the time, not least and most importantly the American people thus US public opinion. It marked the beginning of the end of the Vietnamese war.
This was a powerful single image published on an incredible scale indeed still published to this day. The environmentalist groups need to find such a single image published on a similarly massive scale that can move opinion in the same way, no easy task.
Exhibitions have their place but it takes effort on the part of the politicians we need to impress, to go and see. Unfortunately such exhibition attract in the main the already committed. The single high impact image published everywhere that is unavoidably seen by all including politicians is more likely to trigger the action we are looking for, even then it will take time, time I sadly don't think we have.

Patrick