Body Horror: Photojournalism, Catastrophe and War

What compels people to look at shocking photographs or, alternatively, to look away? Should the press use disturbing images to inform at the risk of offending? How is our sense of politics, morality and culture affected when we are exposed to gruesome images of accidents and disasters, murder and execution, grief and death? This book addresses these questions by examining how the press presents unsettling pictures, especially those of dead and injured foreigners. Drawing on recent experiences in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia and Rwanda, the author argues that documentary photography, for all the horror it reproduces, ultimately defines a democracy.