A curated view of your world in photographs

A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)

How influential images are made

Many iconic photographs have been taken since the invention of the medium in 1839, especially in recent years, when the moniker has been used and abused countless of times. But what makes a photographs stand apart from the trillions of images taken each year is its ability to affect change. Only when a photograph causes people to take action can we truly call an image iconic. Getty Images photographer John Moore took such a photo in the late hours of June 12.

That day, Moore was following a group of Border Patrol agents as they policed the banks of the Rio Grande, on the lookout for border crossers near McAllen, Tex. As groups of migrants stepped off the rafts used to cross the river, the agents made their move. "There were dozens of them," as my colleague Avi Selk wrote this week. "When the guards' lights hit them, Moore saw that they were almost entirely women and children. It was about as pure a family exodus as he had seen in his career."

As the officers started processing the families, Moore talked to a woman from Honduras who had been holding her 2-year-old daughter. Moore was kneeling in the road about six feet away. "It was very quick," he recalled. The mother set the girl down, and an agent began to run gloved hands across her body. Immediately, the girl began to scream. "The mother stoically had her hands against the vehicle, and the girl was crying," Moore said. "Neither were saying words. Nothing could be said with her. She needed to be with her mother."

A few days later, the photograph went viral, putting a face on a political debate that had consumed the country as questions arose about President Trump's family separation policies at the border. The image crystallized emotions when words weren't enough. It mobilized forces on social networks, raising almost $20 million in just a few days, and put pressure on members of both parties to take action. Coupled with the audio of crying children held in detention centers, the photograph played a role in Trump's reversal of his administration's separation policy.

A lot of information about the little girl has since emerged — including the fact that she wasn't separated from her mother — but that shouldn't take away from the photograph's power. Too often, we talk about an administration's policies in abstract terms, creating a sort of emotional buffer between us and the people we read about in the news. Too rarely are we moved by a photograph that transcends those abstractions. One of the most notable examples in past years was the heartbreaking image of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian toddler who drowned in the Mediterranean as his family fled war. The photograph of his lifeless body resting on a Turkish beach forced European leaders to alter their immigration policies, at least for a few months, just as Moore's photograph achieved this week.

But beyond the power of the photograph to elicit change, Moore's series of images is testament to his unrivaled and unwavering dedication to the issue of immigration. For close to 10 years, Moore has been making regular trips to America's border with Mexico. Working closely with U.S. agencies and local NGOs in both countries, the Getty Images photographer developed the network of contacts that makes work with such depth possible.

As Selk wrote, Moore "had ridden with destitute families through Central America on the roofs of anarchic freight trains and followed U.S. border patrols as they chased men through Texas scrubland. He had studied the crisis from so many angles. He knew the secret routes through the deserts, the safest crossings on the Rio Grande and the finer points of the U.S. Border Patrol's search-and-detention protocols."

Moore's years-long work was published this year in the book "Undocumented: Immigration and the Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border," published by PowerHouse.

And while a book can often mark the end of a project, for Moore, the work is continuing, as his latest photographs have shown. Moore and Getty Images should be commended for their long-term commitment to this story — and that commitment should be an example for news organizations and photographers around the country. - Olivier Laurent

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