subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 29 June 2019 35
photograph from a different
angle. Sometimes people don’t
want their pictures taken at all
- that’s fine with me too. The
idea is not to further traumatise
people who have gone through
traumatic situations.’
John has kept in touch
with Sandra since the image
was taken. ‘She first saw the
photograph while she and her
daughter were still in detention
almost three weeks after it was
taken. She was surprised when
she saw it – as anybody would
be if they saw a picture of
themselves circulated so
widely, but I think she always
understood that the image was
important for people to
understand the emotion of
coming [into the USA] as an
asylum seeker.’
Being credited with changing,
or at least helping to change, a
controversial policy is a lot to
place on the shoulders of
any photographer, but it sits
relatively well with John.
‘We always want to have
impact with our pictures as
photojournalists,’ he says.
‘Sometimes we don’t have as
much impact as we like. For
me, it’s gratifying when a
photograph has impact and it’s
impossible for me to know if
this image caused policychange, but certainly it stirred
a big conversation in the USA
about the President’s Zero
Tolerance Policy. If it had
something to do with that
policy change, then I’m fine
with that.’
We have all heard the term
‘fake news’ bandied about, no
more so from President Trump
himself. Indeed, shortly after
this photograph went viral, it
was attacked by the White
House for being ‘dishonest’.
Some people still believe it to
be so – after all it was used as
a poster image for the Zero
Tolerance Policy, despite the
fact that the subject was notdirectly subjected to it. John
argues that he was clear with
his captioning of the image, and
wouldn’t have written it any
differently. ‘I said in the caption
that they – the mother and
child – were being sent to a
processing centre for possible
separation and that was
certainly true; it had happened
to thousands of others. I was
very relieved when it didn’t
happen to them.’John Moore’s image was named World Press
Photo of the Year 2019 at a ceremony in
Amsterdam in April this year. You can see
more of the winning images from this year’s
competition at worldpressphoto.org.