Photos don't tell the whole story

Those frozen bits of time can be misleading. All because the context is missing. Photos don't show the before and after. 

One example is the famous AP photo of a South Vietnamese General executing a Viet Cong fighter with a revolver - graphic image here. 

Total horror. But if the story is true, the murdered guerrilla fighter killed a South Vietnamese officer and his family before capture. 

Dead were the wife, dead were the children, dead was the grandma... the surviving kid moved later to the US and served in the military. 

During the Tet Offensive of 1968, Nguyen's parents and six siblings were killed at their Saigon-area home by alleged Viet Cong guerrillas. Shot in the arm, thigh, and skull, nine-year-old Nguyen stayed in the house for two hours—while his mother bled to death—and then escaped after dark. News sources from the 2020s reported that one of the men who attacked Nguyen's family was Viet Cong officer Nguyễn Văn Lém, whose execution by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan was famously photographed by Eddie Adams.

Does the new context change the emotions around the horrible picture? 

Even the photographer that took the image once said,

What would you do in this situation under the fog of war and violence?

Nothing is black and white. There are grey areas. Never get carried by first impressions and rough emotion. Check the context. Sometimes what we see in a photo is not what it is.

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