29/08/2026
A photograph may be worth a thousand words.
But sometimes, you need someone to help you understand the words.
This morning, my son’s tutor invited me to sit in on his GCSE English Literature lesson. I’m his biggest cheerleader, so I jumped at the chance.
He’s studying War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy.
My son’s autism affects the way he interprets poetry. He can struggle to connect with the emotions an author is trying to evoke, particularly when they aren’t immediately obvious.
But that’s what I love about discussing poetry.
There’s no ‘right’ emotional response.
Sometimes, you just need someone to ask:
Why that word?
Why that phrase?
What does that image make you feel?
And suddenly you see something you hadn’t seen before.
It also got me thinking about photographs.
We are so desensitised to images now.
War. Disaster. Suffering. AI-generated images. Edited images. Fake images. Propaganda.
We don’t automatically believe everything we see.
And that must make the job of a war photographer incredibly difficult.
How do you capture something so horrific that someone thousands of miles away, sitting safely at home, actually stops and feels it?
The Na**lm Girl photograph taken in 1972 did exactly that.
Perhaps in a world where technology can create almost any image, the skill we need most is learning how to look.
