--- title: Columbine Students Want to Share Images of Gun Violence description: Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine mass shooting, students started the #MyLastShot campaign to share photos of the dead. Here's why. canonical: https://time.com/5572607/columbine-gun-violence-campaign/ author: Fred Ritchin article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-04-18T14:27:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:44:40.078Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Columbine Students Want to Share Images of Gun Violence og:description: Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine mass shooting, students started the #MyLastShot campaign to share photos of the dead. Here's why. og:url: https://time.com/5572607/columbine-gun-violence-campaign/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt20a055a533b8f75b/69894887e76ad2751763481c/mylastshot_school_shooting-protest_03_crop.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1360 og:image:height: 765 og:image:alt: Mylastshot_school_shooting-protest_03_Crop og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Columbine Students Want to Share Images of Gun Violence twitter:description: Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine mass shooting, students started the #MyLastShot campaign to share photos of the dead. Here's why. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt20a055a533b8f75b/69894887e76ad2751763481c/mylastshot_school_shooting-protest_03_crop.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Columbine Students Are Asking: Will Sharing Photos of the Dead Change Our History of Violence? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=4fd0ed42-3228-43c8-a0c3-8328c7db1480&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: 100 Photographs: Emmett Till [Watch (HLS stream): 100 Photographs: Emmett Till](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UMjPhgBD.m3u8) (8:27)  _Published 2016-07-09. Emmett Till was brutally killed in the summer of 1955. At his funeral, his mother forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism._ Apr 18, 2019 2:27 PM UTC  Columbine High School senior, Kaylee Tyner,17 holds the #MyLastShot sticker on the back of her ID. Columbine High School senior, Kaylee Tyner,17 holds the #MyLastShot sticker on the back of her ID. Courtesy of #MyLastShot by [Fred Ritchin](https://time.com/author/fred-ritchin/) ## Fred Ritchin Apr 18, 2019 2:27 PM UTC We have long debated when it is appropriate to publish photographs of those who have been killed. When does the news value of the image override the right to the privacy of the dead? And should that right, and the rights of [the deceased’s family](http://time.com/longform/school-shooting-parents/) and friends, ever be overridden? Now students at [Columbine High School](http://time.com/5567574/principals-school-shootings-support-group/), nearly two decades after the mass shooting there, hope to preempt that discussion. They want to make sure that if they too are killed by gun violence, the pictures of their own dead bodies would be circulated widely. The students have asked others to join them in a campaign, called [My Last Shot](https://www.mylastshot.org/), in which a sticker is attached to each person’s identity card or cellphone, reading: “In the event that I die from gun violence please publicize the photo of my death. [#MyLastShot](https://twitter.com/hashtag/mylastshot).” “We’ve become numb to the stats. [Orlando 49](http://time.com/4365323/orlando-shooting-pulse-nightclub-aftermath-photos/), [Vegas 59](http://time.com/4965720/las-vegas-mass-shooting-photographer/), [Parkland 17](http://time.com/parkland-high-school-shooting-vigil/) — numbers that lack humanity,” they assert. “And progress isn’t made through censorship. It’s made when we see humanity at its worst, and together, bring out our best. Because in order to find a solution, we have to see the problem. Even if it’s hard to face.” The students are dissatisfied with “a world where post-shooting photos are mothers hugging their daughters, and police tape.” Nor are they interested only in photography as it is conventionally done—as a reaction—but also as an empty frame that may one day, tragically and hauntingly, need to be filled in, largely because too few did anything now to prevent such future calamities. The students cite the power of specific photographs as inspiration. In 1955, Mamie Till Mobley asked that the mutilated body of her 14-year-old son, [Emmett Till](http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson), be photographed and published in _Jet_ magazine. David Jackson’s heartrending image of Mamie stoically gazing at her child, murdered in Mississippi by racists for allegedly whistling at a white woman, is credited with having galvanized the civil rights movement. Similarly, a 1972 photograph by Nick Ut of the naked body of 9-year-old [Kim Phuc](http://100photos.time.com/photos/nick-ut-terror-war) as she ran down the road, her skin burning from napalm dropped from a South Vietnamese plane, was distributed by Associated Press. It became a searing indictment of the conflict there, after initially being rejected by an editor for showing frontal nudity. And more recently, in 2015, a photograph of the drowned body of 3-year-old Syrian refugee [Alan Kurdi](http://100photos.time.com/photos/nilufer-demir-alan-kurdi) lying facedown on a Turkish beach added pressure on governments, four years after the disastrous conflict in Syria had begun, to accept greater numbers of refugees from that country. In the week after Kurdi’s death, the image helped to create a 1[00-fold increase in the average number of daily donations](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-toddler-idUSKBN14V2MH) to a Syrian refugee fund run by the Swedish Red Cross, for example. The Turkish photographer, Nilüfer Demir, has said of her image that it “is the only way I can express [the scream of his silent body](https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/03/world/dead-migrant-boy-beach-photographer-nilufer-demir/index.html).” These images and others like them used to be seen primarily in mainstream media. But Kaylee Tyner, My Last Shot’s 17-year-old founder, sees the photographs envisioned in their campaign traveling primarily through social media. “Our lives are centered around social media and, contrary to popular belief, it is actually a lot more helpful than a lot of people think,” she told TIME. Social media, she says, “makes it more personal.” It is also likely that graphic images of young people murdered at gunpoint would be more likely to go viral on social media than to become iconic in conventional publications, given their constraints on privacy.  A picture of the #MyLastShot sticker that part of a campaign to reduce gun violence. Courtesy of #MyLastShot Growing up with social media, younger people are more accustomed to constructing their own narratives than an older generation that relied upon conventional media to do it for them. Tyner experienced this when she stumbled across a video of the Parkland school shooting that “a kid had just taken inside the classroom as the room was being shot up.” She explains, “I could just hear other kids screaming and seeing all of it in the video. And it was like, _That was their reality_.” It’s a reality that she and others would prefer that more people, including those in power, confront. “If you’re uncomfortable with them releasing a video,” she says, “you should be uncomfortable with the fact that their school was shot up.” These issues are certainly not easy for a parent to handle. Tyner’s mother Andrea said that, when she first heard about the My Last Shot campaign from Kaylee, it took her breath away. “The thought made me so uncomfortable,” she said, “but I know it’s more of a vehicle for awareness.” As Kaylee put it: “The ultimate goal is for these images to never come out.” This campaign reveals a disturbing truth: that high school students may foresee their own deaths in what should be the safest of spaces. And others share their thinking. For example, the Twitter campaign [#IfTheyGunnedMeDown](http://time.com/3100975/iftheygunnedmedown-ferguson-missouri-michael-brown/) emerged following the fatal 2014 police shooting of unarmed 18-year-old [Michael Brown](http://time.com/3987395/ferguson-michael-brown-shooting-anniversary/) in [Ferguson, Missouri,](http://time.com/3982028/ferguson-michael-brown-photos/) as a way for young African Americans to draw attention to the tendency of media outlets to use racist stereotypes when portraying black people who are killed in similar circumstances. They shared the images of themselves that they thought such outlets would use—and juxtaposed them with more everyday images, such as of them performing in a high school band or graduating, that they hoped would be used to represent them if ever they were, in fact, gunned down. > [](https://twitter.com/DevGriffin618/status/498641196839735297) Visual strategies that proactively respond to the threat of young people’s violent deaths are not confined to the United States. A similar approach was used in a book project by [Issa Touma](https://www.instagram.com/issa%5Ftouma/?hl=en), a Syrian gallery owner and photographer, titled [_Women We Have Not Lost Yet_](https://www.facebook.com/News-of-Women-We-Have-not-Lost-Yet-592063880966856/). Published in Arabic and English in 2015, the collection recounts the tenuous lives of young women gathered in his Aleppo gallery during a ferocious weeklong attack on the city that year. In the images, their faces are printed in two parts on separate pages, without their eyes being shown. “The women we are seeing in these photographs are still alive,” Touma writes. “They are not different from any woman in the West.” In the text that accompanies one such portrait, 21-one-year old Dima explains, “Since the war started, I’ve said goodbye to so many people. I stopped meeting people so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye any more. I’ve lost any sense of being alive. I’m staying in Aleppo to finish my studies, and every night I count the bombs exploding around my house until I fall asleep.” When thinking about the goals and hopes behind these contemporary projects, one is reminded of [_War against War!_](https://issuu.com/samzdat/docs/ernst%5Ffriedrich%5Fkrieg%5Fdem%5Fkriege%5F%5Fg)_,_ the extraordinary book first published soon after [World War I](http://time.com/5444257/last-american-wwi-henry-gunther/) that contained horrific photographs depicting the war’s devastation, including many images of casualties with grotesquely disfigured faces. The hope was for the book’s publication to turn the public against future wars nearly a century ago. In his author’s introduction, written in four languages and addressed “To Human Beings in all lands!”, Ernst Friedrich forcefully asserts the credibility of the photographs: “And not one single man of any country whatsoever can arise and bear witness against these photographs, that they are untrue and that they do not correspond to realities.” As we know, these photographs did not succeed in ending war. And today, with billions of photographs being produced daily and frequent critiques being leveled against the credibility of media, photographic evidence is often deemed unpersuasive. But by changing their focus to the future, the photographic strategies of young people today may be of help in avoiding some of the worst outcomes. In this sense, they can be said to be engaging not with the more usual photography of war, but a photography of peace. Still, it is a sobering way to live in the present. We had all wished for better. _Ritchin is Dean Emeritus of the International Center of Photography._ ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me. And that the death of my son could mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died. [ MUSIC ] Emmett Till, 14, was kidnapped and killed, allegedly for wolf whistling at the wife of accused Roy Bryant. [ MUSIC ] It's not just that they discover his body and that he's been killed. [ MUSIC ] He has been brutally, brutally beaten. [ MUSIC ] As a criminal defense attorney, when we look at crimes, we often try to put together picture about what happened. And it takes a lot of hatred and a lot of rage. [ MUSIC ] To do the kind of violence that was done to Emmett Hill. Being a black boy in the American South could be quite perilous. The allegation that Emmett Hill was being social with a white woman was considered an affront, a threat to the. Racial war. And I think the shock of his death was compounded by the brutality of his death. [ MUSIC ] Emmett's mother couldn't actually conform to the conventions of the time. She did something really quite remarkable [ MUSIC ] She made the really unorthodox choice of having a funeral with an open casket that was going to be very widely publicized, it was going to be attended by the national press. She wanted civil rights leaders and political leaders to see what they did to her child. [ MUSIC ] She invited David Jackson in Jet magazine to take pictures of this childs battered body. [ MUSIC ] And this images world widely circulate. Jet magazine was a publication that was primarily produced and distributed to the African- American community that had been trying to educate the rest of the country about the horrors of segregation and racial violence and lynching in the American South. And the images were really, really challenging. It was the kind of visual that you didn't typically see. You certainly didn't see it outside of a war zone. And you certainly didn't see it with children. [ MUSIC ] His face was grotesque. [ UNKNOWN ] You could see eyes but you couldn't really distinguish all of his facial features. That's how much violence he had been subjected to. Ant its mother's presence in the photo is really important because she's really giving witness to victimization and violence. The other images that Emmett's mother provided just created this notion of a very respectable young boy who was trying to make the very best impression on everyone he met. The juxtaposition of a little boy in a suit and a tie with his battered face This was a stark image, that made it impossible for anyone who saw it, to be silent about it. Mainstream publications like Look and Life began talking bout this issue, it became an issue that elected officials will be questioned about. These images made it impossible for white families in other part of the country to stay indifferent to stay neutral. [ MUSIC ]. Never as this quite little cuddling growing community of Mississippi seen so much publicity and so much excitement in the past few days. Nearly two hundred of the town's five or six hundred residents were packed into the courthouse to hear the day's proceedings. Do you have any evidence bearing on this case? I do know that this was my son. How long do you expect to be here? He turned the chairs over. Bryant and his half brother, JW Milam were acquitted by this jury. [ MUSIC ] And subsequently, even though they admitted taking the boy from the house, they were freed of kidnap charges. The Inability to hold anyone accountable for his murder and the comfort with which the men who killed him were able to talk about the violence was just adding to the injury. They weren't just killing a boy, they're expressing something rooted in Just decades of animosity and fear and anger. [ MUSIC ] A boy, a 14- year- old boy was killed rudely. And one of our objectives here is to see to it that that boy whose picture you see there. [ MUSIC ] These images became powerful forces in organizing the new level of committment and resistance. The brutal murder of Emmett Till really. Pushed Rosa Parks to a deeper level of activism. That was one of the motivating forces behind her choice to not give up her seat on that bus. And in many ways, it was an organizing and galvanizing moment for the civil rights movement in this country. [ MUSIC ]. This shootings of unarmed black boys and men has been going on for decades. It is a manifestation of the same presumption of dangerousness that killed Damon Hill. That killed 1, 000s of people of colour during the lynching error [ MUSIC ] Imagery and photography is a really important tool. [ MUSIC ] Without the imagery, there would be no one who's prepared to believe some of the violence that we've witnessed. [ MUSIC ] [ APPLAUSE ] It's such a gratifying feeling to see you all sitting by and standing by because I realize shortly after this happened that it wasn't a fight that I could do. That it was gonna be a fight that we had to do. That the people would do for me, more or less. [ APPLAUSE ] We've never made progress in this country around important social justice issues until we've given marginal victims a face. That image still has resonance. It still has power. I think it still expresses the pain and anguish of a huge part of our population that is still hoping for basic recognition of their humanity. And I want you all to stand by me because it's going to be a fight. And if you will stand by me I will stand by you because I am not afraid. [ APPLAUSE ] [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5572607/columbine-gun-violence-campaign/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5572607/columbine-gun-violence-campaign/"},"headline":"Columbine Students Are Asking: Will Sharing Photos of the Dead Change Our History of Violence?","datePublished":"2019-04-18T14:27:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:44:40.078Z","description":"Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Columbine mass shooting, students started the #MyLastShot campaign to share photos of the dead. 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