Humanity Through the Photographer’s Lense

Photography can be terrifying because it does not interpret, it does not judge, it simply exists. And so when I browsed these powerful photos, I was struck by their rawness–their profound representation of man.

Such a bird’s eye view of the human condition got me thinking. One of the things that continues to strike me the more I study political philosophy is that we cannot and will not ever be fully contained and boxed in by any political system. There needs to be room left for the fact that man, in all his strivings, his suffering, his joy, and his never-ending reaching for happiness, will never be comprehended by a single political philosopher.
The current trend wants to say otherwise. Progressivism thinks of man as perfectable and moving towards a utopia. It says the pursuit of happiness lies in the state ultimately determining his property, his religious liberty, his rights to marry.

We are moving away from man’s nature with every turn of the corner. But who is he really? Photos like these remind us that when Christians protect Muslims, when Afghans help Americans, when memories of war permeate a man, when a couple’s love becomes all that matters in their dying moments–man stripped to his core is what remains. He is unpredictable and will never be summed up by ideology. His nature underlies the political system in which he lives. And this will never be fully encompassed by any political system.