“All I could do was be was a voice for his silent scream. It is an image that keeps me awake at night.”

Nilüfer Demir has been working with the Turkish News agency DHA for more than half her life. Starting at fifteen as a trainee journalist, she has developed into a highly respected journalist.

For the past ten years, she and her fellow reporters at DHA have been photographing and reporting (for the UNCA) on the arrivals of refugees to the shores of Bodrum, in Southern Turkey. Bodrum is regularly used as a stepping-stone to the Greek Island of Kos – four miles away, as the crow flies.

They have witnessed this frightened humanity attempting to escape war-torn Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria:  crammed into over-crowded leaking boats and rubber rafts, these desperate families have abandoned the life they knew and everything they own in an attempt to find safe refuge in Europe. In the early hours of Sept. 2, the family crowded onto a small inflatable boat on the beach of Bodrum, Turkey. A few minutes into the journey to Greece, the dinghy capsized. Alan, his older brother Ghalib and his mother Rihanna all drowned, joining the more than 3,600 other refugees who died in the eastern Mediterranean this year.

On the morning of September 2nd, 2015 Nilüfer was simply doing her job – she was not to know that this was to become day that would change her life forever. 

“That morning I was documenting a group of Pakistani refugees in their rubber dinghy” said Demir “It was then I saw the body of three year old toddler Aylan Kurdi lying face down on the sand. I felt frozen to the spot – it was the darkest day of my professional life. But I have a job to do, and all I could be was a voice for his silent scream and I pushed myself through my pain and grief to make the picture.”

It is a dilemma that faces every photo-journalist and Editor from time to time. Should they make the image? Should they publish the image? Should they edit their photography out of respect for the dignity for the subject?

“On one hand” Demir continues “I would rather have made a picture of Aylan playing with his family than photographing his lifeless body on a beach, but if the image has forced the world to care about the suffering of children, if it has changed attitudes towards refugees, then I am happy it was published.... however, it is an image that keeps me awake at night.”

No one can possibly understand the trauma experienced by a journalist witnessing a tragic situation like this. The memory of these moments burn themselves into the memory and present themselves time and time again. It has been experienced by Penny Tweedie when witnessing the bayonetting in Bengladesh, and by Eddie Adams in Saigon, and many others.

As gruesome as these images are, we should be grateful or the determination and courage of these journalists in bringing these tragedies to the forefront of public awareness.

We cannot fight these injustices if we don’t know about them.