Sentence:  This is why photography needs to mediate its critical possibilities and limitations not just through a state-of-exception—or its cousin, the atrocity image—even if these things represent the <WSD>extreme points</WSD> of the social ontology of photography in the current period and should be defended as evidence of systemic crisis. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A standpoint that goes farthest in some dimension or on some criterion.