Can a photograph change the world?

As a teenager getting interested in photography I used to thumb through many a book in the library (remember them?) just looking at images.

One day I stumbled on Nick Ut’s ‘Napalm Girl’ from then on I was hooked. I knew then a photograph can change the world: I knew that because that photograph changed me. I knew from that moment I wanted to take photography seriously, I felt I’d had my eyes opened to its real power. I became fascinated by the Vietnam war photographers and how their work had in many ways influenced the war by bringing the true horror home for the first time in a way that can not be achieved with just words.

Nowadays being so bombarded with images, 24 hour rolling news, and the constant stream of information (much of it misinformation) flooding out via social media it’s much harder to pick out an image that defines the times and affects public opinion so dramatically. Though it can still happen. It has happened.

In 2015 a small series of photographs taken by little known photographer Nilufer Demir who works for a Turkish news agency slapped the world around the face. She was in the wrong place at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time depending which way you choose to look at it.

Without any doubt these images at least temporarily swayed public opinion in the UK as well as…