The Heartbreaking Image of the Syrian Boy Will Not Necessarily Lead to Action

Images make us care about the news but their impact is not assured.

When news coverage involves difficult and incomprehensible events, especially in distant lands, we turn to images for focus: homes made useless by flooding, distressed families seeking refuge, the agony of children maimed by war.

Seeing concrete scenes helps make news coverage real.

So too with young Aylan Kurdi, whose picture dominated the media this week after he drowned with his sister and mother trying to escape Syria. Showing the boy crumpled dead in the sand, the image has quickly become an emblem of the horrendous refugee crisis pummelling the Middle East and Europe.

Like other memorable images, the picture reminds us of what matters about the news. Sidestepping the intricate, often overwhelming detail that accompanies news stories, it targets what is important but lost sometimes in storytelling. It gives us a chance to engage emotionally regardless of the event's political, economic or social contours. It stays with us long after details have faded.

This picture is unusual because it has already been attached to the story of a particular family. Perhaps for that reason, it is turning into a platform for the public attention that has so far eclipsed the refugee crisis. Outpourings of grief are everywhere, and governments in the UK, Canada, Hungary and elsewhere are changing their stance on the refugees' plight.

But how sustainable is this attention?

The history of news is filled with memorable pictures, often of children, that were hailed for changing public sentiment about depicted events: a child in the Warsaw Ghetto, a starving Biafran toddler, a Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack, a Colombian adolescent being swallowed by a mudslide, a young Palestinian boy shot to death in a Gaza intersection.

None of these pictures generated impact in a direct or certain fashion.

The photo of the boy in the Warsaw Ghetto was taken in 1943 while he was being deported under the watchful gun of a Nazi soldier. Other than in early documents related to the Holocaust, it did not appear widely at the time. His identity and fate still remain unknown.

Only in 1961, when the picture was used during the internationally televised trial of Adolf Eichmann, did the media readily publish it.

Today, it remains among the iconic images of the Holocaust.

Nick Ut's 1972 photograph of nine-year-old Kim Phuc, running from a napalm attack in Vietnam, followed a decade's worth of other memorable images--a burning monk, an execution of a suspected Viet Cong fighter, a village massacre.

At first it was criticized for displaying nudity and muddying the responsibility for the attack. Readers called it "nauseating" and "obscene."

But protest was short-lived. Opposition to the war, then building over a decade, crucially helped support the photo's display. It was published widely and reprinted repeatedly as the photographer and others tracked the girl's recovery over time. Winning prizes, the picture became the centerpiece of news articles, documentary films, political posters and books.

Given a context against which it could grow, today the picture remains among the most enduring depictions of the Vietnam War.

When images coax us to look, we need to help them along to impact.

Images work best when they appear alongside others depicting similar themes. They have the most power when they ride on already shifting public opinion. They become memorable when people work to keep them so.

The image of Aylan Kurdi is beginning to push people to action. This development is important but it is only a start.

The impact of images does not ensue from mere engagement with them. Looking needs to provoke sustained action.