Last week I visited an exhibition titled ’60 years of press-photography from Israel – Paul Goldman and David Rubinger’.
The photos overall where quite mediocre – albeit I found some hidden jewels anyway.
Nothing there worth a blog-post if my companion wouldn’t have pointed out the German caption beneath one of the exhibits.
Apparently spontaniously corrected by a fellow visitor, the text reads:

Ariel Scharon [...], one week before the start of the Lebanon War broke out

(Mind you I’m talking about the German version of the caption translated back, not the – correct – original English version as shown on the picture)

Beside that this poignant example of vandalism made me giggle, it also reminded me of my own responsibilities when formulating captions.

Wars don’t ‘break out’ they are men made

There is a distinctive line between, let’s say, an earth-quake and a famine. Former ‘just happens’ while the second is ‘made’.
Events of the second category have a pre-history that need to be scrutinized and social-actors that must be held accountable.

I as a photographer – or for that matter anyone responsible for describing an occurrence in words – am reliable that this line doesn’t get blurred by imprudent diction.