About to Die How News Images Move the Public

Due to its ability to freeze a moment in time, the photo is a uniquely powerful device for ordering and understanding the world. But when an image depicts complex, ambiguous, or controversial events-terrorist attacks, wars, political assassinations--its ability to influence perception can prove deeply unsettling. Are we really seeing the world "as it is" or is the image a fabrication or projection? How do a photo's content and form shape a viewer's impressions? What do such images contribute to historical memory?About to Diefocuses on one emotionally charged category of news photograph--depictions of individuals who are facing imminent death--as a prism for addressing such vital questions. Tracking events as wide-ranging as the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and 9/11, Barbie Zelizer demonstrates that modes of journalistic depiction and the power of the image are immense cultural forces that are still far from understood. Through a survey of a century of photojournalism, including close analysis of over sixty photos,About to Dieprovides a framework and vocabulary for understanding the news imagery that so profoundly shapes our view of the world.

Barbie Zelizer is Raymond Williams Chair of Communication and the Director of the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of several collections and the author of Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye and Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory.

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: Journalism, Memory and The Voice of the Visual

Chapter Two: Why Images of Impending Death Makes Sense in the News

Chapter Three: Presumed Death

Chapter Four: Possible Death

Chapter Five: Certain Death

Chapter Six: Journalism's Mix of Presumption, Possibility and Certainty

Chapter Seven: When the "As If" Erases Accountability

Chapter Eight: How News Images Move the Public