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There are some images that once seen can't be forgotten. Earlier this month, the lifeless body of a young Syrian toddler

washed up on the beach of a Turkish resort town. The photograph of him, with his dark hair

and his bright red t-shirt and shorts, has become the symbol of refugees fleeing Syria.

I'm Anne Strange Amps, and today, on to the best of our knowledge from PRI, we're talking

about the moral value of photography during times of war and human crisis. Do images of pain

and suffering foster empathy and compassion, or do they do something else?

The late Susan Sontag spent her entire life asking these questions.

She wrote a classic book on the subject called Regarding the Pain of Others.

And she told Steve Paulson that graphic war photos can be very powerful, but also very complicated,

and they can have unintended consequences. All war photos can be very powerful, but also very complicated, and they can have unintended consequences.

All war photography is susceptible, available to being used for organizing against war. But I don't think it has to have that impact at all, because I in certain context you see these images as look at the terrible things the enemy is doing to us, we must fight even harder to repel the enemy.

I think to a Palestinian looking at images of the destruction of the center of the refugee camp in Janine.

These are not anti-war images.

These are images which promote militancy.

In your book, you point out that many of the classic war photographs over the decades were actually staged.

I mean, going back to Matthew Brady during the Civil War,

a lot of those pictures of dead bodies were, the bodies were rearranged to make them look

especially graphic, I guess you could say. And other classic photos were staged as well. The

American soldiers planting the flag at Ewo Jima. That was a recreation of an

actual event. Well, you know, I think that the understanding of photography almost from the

beginning was that it was something that was posed. To begin with, it was because exposure time

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