Every photojournalist carries two cameras: one that records light, one that records their growing certainty that they alone understand what the light means.
The first camera is mechanical. Photons hit a sensor. A moment is captured. A fragment of reality, however subjective its framing, remains tethered to what occurred.
The second camera is psychological. It begins recording the moment their first image is published. It tracks validation: editors choosing their work, audiences responding, awards accumulating. Each success adds another frame to an internal narrative: “I was there. I saw. I understand.”
Not every photojournalist succumbs to this narrative. Many remain disciplined in their role as witnesses, refusing to interpret beyond what they directly observed. But the profession creates conditions that make the temptation almost inevitable for some. And when they do succumb, something dangerous happens: they no longer see themselves as providing testimony. They believe they offer explanation. And from explanation, they claim moral authority.
The Access Asymmetry
The first condition is structural. Photojournalists go where others cannot or will not go: war zones, disasters, closed societies, moments of crisis. They return with images. The audience, grateful for visual access to the inaccessible, treats them as experts. “You were there,” they say. “Tell us what it means.”
This is the invitation. The system, editors, audiences, event organizers, asks them to do more than describe. It asks them to explain.
And here the delusion crystallizes. The logic is simple: they put their eyes on events others couldn’t see. Their pictures helped audiences understand. Awards validated this contribution. Therefore, they reason, their judgment has special value. So they shift from explaining what they’re asked about to instructing others on what to look at and how to think about it.
Proximity becomes confused with comprehension. Access with understanding. Being in a place with knowing about that place.
But access is not wisdom. A photojournalist in a war zone for three weeks does not understand the war’s causes, its strategies, its consequences, or its moral dimensions. They witnessed fragments. They saw moments. They documented details here and there, sporadically, incompletely.
To come close to comprehensive understanding of any complex situation requires seeing everything: both sides, every decision, all information, the full scope of actions and motivations. Photojournalists do the opposite. They photograph fragments and call it knowledge. The system encourages this confusion.
Photojournalism is not a competition. AI generated image
The Objectivity Delusion
The second condition is ideological. Photojournalism teaches its practitioners that their key professional attribute is pristine objectivity. They are trained to believe they can rise above petty personal opinions, that they possess an overall view of situations that allows them to judge without bias.
This belief is completely wrong, but the profession reinforces it at every turn.
Vision is not a mirror; it is active reconstruction. Photojournalists are shaped by professional training that creates conformity, learning to shoot the same “powerful” tropes. They are bound by cultural conditioning; in the Western world, visual grammar feeds directly into Christian iconography. They do not see the world; they see what they have been trained to recognize as a “shot”.
And beyond perception itself, photography is an act of reduction. Every frame requires a cascade of subjective choices: this subject, not another; this moment, not the next; this angle, this lens with its perspective; this framing that removes sound and dimension and smell and touch; this crop; this light adjustment; these words for the caption. Each decision is guided by education, experience, luck, necessity, never by a higher moral foundation.
Yet the profession’s self-mythology insists on objectivity. And when practitioners believe they possess it, they grant themselves permission to judge.
The Nail and the Skyscraper
The third condition is architectural. A proper understanding of a conflict is built by many witnesses: writers, researchers, historians, locals. A publication attempts to construct this comprehensive view using these combined materials. In this architecture, the photojournalist provides one nail.
But because they are part of the structure, some fool themselves into thinking they are the structure. It is like the nail claiming to be the whole skyscraper.
The profession enables this confusion. Over time, successful photojournalists are invited to speak about their experiences at conferences, in interviews, on panels. The system shifts them from describing what they saw to explaining what it means. And once they make that shift, once they accept that their fragments constitute understanding, they begin to render judgment on everything. Not just what they covered, but every event in the news. They take sides confidently because they believe they know. And knowing, they feel morally obligated to guide others toward the right path.
The system rewards this behavior. Controversy generates attention. Moral certainty sells.
The Symptoms
For those who succumb to these conditions, the false moral authority manifests in predictable ways. They write op-eds about conflicts they briefly witnessed. They give speeches, positioning themselves as moral educators. They accept the role of activist, convinced that their images empower them to fix right from wrong.
The least humble develop what can only be described as a priestly self-image: “I have seen god, and I am here to tell you his message. Here’s how it works.” They carry this belief from story to story, and the more they are published, the more awards they win, the more they become overconfident in their moral supremacy. They start rendering judgment on everything, all the time, with a sense of tired obligation.
They become the main characters in documentaries because they are on a moral mission. They trade the constraints of the frame for the pulpit.
And when their pronouncements create controversy, they take this as confirmation that they are on the right path. After all, telling the truth hurts those who have tried to keep it secret. The system that created this dynamic now validates it.
There are places where a photojournalist should not be. AI-generated image
The Distinction That Matters
None of this negates the value of photojournalistic work. A light-based photograph captures a moment anchored in time and place. However subjective its framing, it retains an indexical link to the real. It may be interpreted, misread, or weaponized, but it remains a document of something that happened. A trace.
That trace is testimony. It is evidence. It is valuable precisely because the photojournalist was there and we were not. Only one of them was there, and that still makes a difference.
Many photojournalists understand this distinction and maintain it throughout their careers. They resist the temptation to explain. They provide fragments and acknowledge them as fragments. They describe what they witnessed without claiming to have a comprehensive understanding. They refuse the invitation to moral authority.
But for those who succumb, and the profession makes it tempting, the act of being present is mistaken for moral authority to judge.
The photojournalist’s fragments deserve our attention. Their moral pronouncements do not. Their images offer evidence of what occurred. Their interpretations of what it all means should be received with the same skepticism we apply to any other witness: as one perspective, culturally conditioned, inevitably incomplete, and never sufficient on its own.
Even in court, one witness is never enough.
The danger is not that some photojournalists provide testimony and others claim more. The danger is that the profession itself, through its structures of validation, its ideology of objectivity, its invitations to explain, and its awards, has created conditions that tempt practitioners toward a confusion they should resist. Because those who preach rather than document have a louder voice, they undermine what makes photojournalism indispensable, transforming it from beacon of truth to pedestal for uninvited preachers.
