Duplicate this page before you start, and write your answers in your own copy.
First you will see some of the photographs below on screen, without their captions. Don't scroll down yet.
✍️ Write here, on your own: for each photograph, write what you can actually observe, what you think you know from it, and how confident you are (1 = a guess, 5 = certain). Then write your own one- or two-sentence caption.
| Photograph | What I can observe | What I think I know | Confidence (1–5) | My caption |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 3 | ||||
| 4 |
Now read the photographs with their captions.
✍️ Write here, on your own.
By Susan Meiselas
When news came of the first plane crashing into one of the twin towers on 11 September 2001, Susan Meiselas cycled downtown with her camera – “moving toward what everyone else was desperately fleeing from”, with “no sense of the scale of what had happened”.
For her, this image stands out as a rare moment of “stillness amid the chaos”. It shows a lifesize statue of a businessman, Double Check (1982) by John Seward Johnson II, surrounded by debris in Liberty Plaza Park, across from the World Trade Center. Initially Meiselas couldn’t tell if it was a real person.
Today, she sees the statue as a symbol of the attempt to make sense of the enormity of 9/11 and its terrible aftermath: George W Bush’s “war on terror”. “A lot has happened as a consequence. Even the endless lines of security at the airport – these are small reminders of our distrust of each other.”
By José Palazón
In 2014, Melilla – a tiny slice of Spanish territory in Morocco – became emblematic of the rise of “Fortress Europe” policies in the 21st century. Human rights activist José Palazón captured the moment a group of men attempting to cross Melilla’s border became stuck on a razor wire fence for hours while Spanish golfers continued their game below. Eight years later, Melilla would become the site of a massacre in which at least 37 people trying to cross into Spain were killed by border guards.
Palazón shared his photo on Twitter, with the caption: “Immigrants on the fence, expulsions and a game of golf. Only in Melilla.” The surreal image of inequality quickly went viral. “It seemed like a good moment to take a photo that was a bit more symbolic,” he later said.
By Emilio Morenatti
This photo shows the emotional reunion of Agustina Cañamero and Pascual Pérez, a couple in their 80s, in a nursing home in Barcelona in June 2020. Husband and wife had been separated for 102 days in the first lockdown – their longest time apart in 59 years of marriage. The image has come to symbolise how lives worldwide were upended by Covid.
By Cameron Spencer
“There you go, I’m the greatest,” said Usain Bolt when he achieved an unprecedented three consecutive Olympic golds (in 2008, 2012, 2016) in three races. Here, in the Rio 100m semi-final, “Lightning Bolt” seems to have found time to flash the camera a smile. He was in fact checking whether the runner to his left was catching up: “I saw I had him covered, and I smiled.”