It very important that viewers not shut down, but instead engage their own emotions. If I cave in, if I fold up because of the emotional obstacles that are in front of me, I'm useless. There is no point in me being there in the first place. And I think if you go to places where people are experiencing these kinds of tragedies with a camera, you have a responsibility. The value of it is to make an appeal to the rest of the world, to create an impetus where change is possible through public opinion.
Public opinion is created through awareness.
My job is to help create the awareness. I don't want to make these pictures easy to look at. I want to ruin people's day if I have to. I want to stop them in their tracks and make them think of people beyond themselves. There's a tension between the objective and subjective in reporting.