Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

What is an historical nexus? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a nexus is a noun that means “a connected group or series.” Each generation creates their own nexuses within the larger scope of history, a series of events that informs everything before and after. Since the invention of the camera, photography has given us the ability to capture a single moment allowing it to last forever. These moments elicit a multitude of rationale and emotional responses from its viewer. Bringing into focus the viewers’ own experiences and placing them into the confines of a single frame that has become a part of history. For example, a man being executed on the streets of Saigon taken by Eddie Adams is one of the most infamous portraits of war in the twentieth century, the composition begs questions that not all viewers are able to answer. It is one of the defining moments of the Vietnam war and a photographer was able to catch the last moment of a man’s life before being spontaneously executed. It provides no other context, but the fact that a man just became another casualty of war. In global and domestic places, that most of us wouldn’t dream of going, professionals stand with cameras capturing humanitarian singularities that comment on a variety of topics, such as ethics, politics, crimes, beauty, destruction, death, and life, covering a form of universality. There are no words, the are no sounds, and there is no movement; there is only a single moment and an unmoving image requiring a global interpretation of the truth within that single frame. This becomes the nature of work for photo-journalists, the genre of photo-journalism functions as a recorder of different nexuses throughout history, in times, and areas that require documentation contributing to the growth of knowledge among a global community.