Now, almost fifty years later, as I consider the war pictures habitually published by the press, by which I mean various heaps of bodies in a ditch, they have about the same impact on me as bad pornography: if the images were forbidden and I was fourteen, they might hold some interest. But in an adult they cause nothing more than a cold disgust. See, for instance, Gilles Peress's recent portfolio on Kosovo (The New Yorker,July 19, 1999): Peress is one of the best photographers around, yet the only effective picture in the portfolio is the last one, the mud-covered family album, because such an object is part of any reader's symbolic vocabulary, thus enabling us to establish personal connections between whom we see and who we are.