A picture is worth...death?

Photojournalists take pictures that tell stories and capture audiences. Their job is to be quick on the draw and to get the best shot possible. In certain cases, they even put their lives at risk.

But what about the people in the pictures? What about putting their lives at risk? Do photojournalists think about how they will be affected?

Warren Zinn, an ex-photojournalist, ponders those questions in his article Richochet. He writes about an email he received in regards to a photograph he had taken, while embedded with a troop in March 2003. It was the beginning of the war in Iraq and he was a young photojournalist trying to make a name for himself.

Zinn was able to capture the perfect picture. It was of a soldier, Joseph Dwyer, carrying a young Iraqi boy who had been injured. It was such a heroic visualization of the war, that it ended up on the front page of the USA Today, as well as many news outlets around the world.

That was 5 years ago. Two weeks ago, Zinn received an email that read, "the soldier you made famous -- killed himself last Saturday -- thought you should know." Dwyer had died of a substance overdose. In an article posted on theage.com, it indicated that he had been sniffing aerosol in order to fall asleep.

Was it thoughts of the war that made him unable to sleep? Was it the fame that came with the picture? Was it because everytime he turned around he saw the picture and again was reminded of the war?

It leaves Zinn with many questions as written in his article. "Did this photo have anything to do with his death? News reports said he hated the celebrity that came with the picture. How much, I wondered, did that moment -- just 1/250th of a second when three lives intersected on a river bank in Iraq -- contribute to the burdens he'd brought home with him? If I'd never taken his picture, would he have ended up as he did? Would he still have been a casualty of war?"

Only Joseph Dwyer knew the truth and now he is gone. His memory will live on forever in the famous photograph taken by Warren Zinn. The very photograph that may had a part in the end to his life.