Some of the best photographs I've seen have been taken during horrible war-time atrocities. By 'best', I obviously don't mean aesthetically pleasing, but rather artistically impressive photos. The Vietnam conflict, for example, was a cornucopia of phenomenal photography, from the amateur photos of the terrible atrocities at
My Lai, to the now iconic images of the
Burning Monk,
point-blank Vietcong murders and
Vietnamese children running away terrified from the oncoming Agent Orange. All of these truly horrible situations, yet many of them literally did help shape the course of future events.
Nowadays, with the possible exception of the Abu Ghraib photos, photography seems to have ceded its dominance to that of video reporting. We now want footage of stuff happening before our eyes; live would be even better. Whether it's a case of blood lust on some sort of primal level, I can't say for sure. All I can say is that war photography is becoming less and less relevant as a news tool, but doesn't diminish its artistic merit. To go back to the original question, sort of, if photographers want to monetize their art, that's their prerogative, but the purpose of photos is shifting from a purely information-driven marketplace to a more artistic one.