Rather, he is creating a palatable context for conveying human dignity in the face of evil's broad sweep. He is using the camera as moral gyroscope, finding that one transcendent moment when a person's strength of will manages to suspend or suppress, if only for an instant, the forces of persecution or servitude, famine or genocide. One last reason for Inferno's success, perhaps, is that the time requires it. Since the fall of Communism, ours is a society turned numb to conflicts worlds away. Ours is an era when much of the West is otherwise engaged - caught up in the lure of progress, profit, appearance and diversion.
Inferno is merely a world's conscience stirring.
It forces its readers to confront the fact that much of the planet is still living under the tyranny of the gun, and at the mercy of the inhumane. For whatever reason, Inferno has touched a nerve. And this is encouraging at a time when many bemoan the diminishing power of the still photograph. Tombstones are carved to memorialize the dead. But sometimes they are meant to awaken the living.