Generations have pondered Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan's justly famous photos of the dead at Gettysburg. One of the most famous of all photographs is Robert Capa's 1936 Moment of Death , taken during the Spanish Civil War. It presents a Republican soldier as he is shot, capturing what usually is interpreted as an instant of noble sacrifice. In his 1975 book, The First Casualty , Phillip Knightley examines this picture and its history at length. Paying homage to the great war photographer's courage and talent, he nonetheless notes the conflicting stories of the photo's origins, Capa's own silence about the image in his writings, and other writers' questions.
People see what they want in pictures.
Even in pictures of death. At the level of mass information, we readily grant ourselves permission to look at such images. Terrible scenes of massacres, bombings, and the like are displayed almost daily. But it is easy to take this idea of death imagery as important evidence and to expand it into an excuse that legitimizes the sort of voyeurism we have just seen in the Diana case. That is just what has happened with a number of shocking images involving famous and beloved persons.