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I love the way a great picture taken by the right photographer at the right split-second can convey much more than just an image. A really good image will put you there, complete with the empathy/rage/disdain that was intended for the viewer. Once I was flipping through a collection of all the Pulitzer winning photographs since 1942, and had to sit in one of the bookstore chairs and look at all of them until I finished. Seriously powerful work–sometimes macabre, rarely whimsical, often a tenth of a second away from being tossed aside and undeveloped.

This is the reason why I was embarrassed to have known next to nothing about Charles Moore, who died last week at 79. There were many photographers that took amazing risks to document the Civil Rights movement, but many of Moore’s images still resonate with me and still create that visceral, emotional response that I think people look for with good photography.

I’d think that in the time before the 24-hour news cycle and instantaneous updates (think twitter), the one surefire way for much of moderate America to know what was happening all over the South was to see. Without these images I don’t think the movement would have spread like it did, as fast as it did.

For people born after much of the struggle like myself, I think that images like the ones Mr Moore and many others are responsible for bringing the costs of the movement to multiple generations after the fact.

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