A True But Painful Site

I was told by some friends that I needed to go to the mall. Ok. The mall in Regensburg is pretty similar to malls in the U.S. You get an image of the bright lights, smells of fried food, mannequins in every window wearing a smattering of the latest trends, people shopping, sipping coffee, talking on cell phones, etc. You get the picture. Anyway, I wasn't told to go to the mall to see all of the above. Instead I was told to go and see the photography exhibit that was on display there. It was showing photography from all over the world and from every aspect of life. That included the horrible stuff too. As I walked through the mall I wondered where on earth they would display such an exhibit, when all of the sudden there it was. In front of me stood large pictures on those plastic board things right in the center of the mall. The first few were sports related: some of the olympics for the mature (that is being polite, two competitors were over 100 years old!), some of Lance Armstrong, some of people in the Iron Man in Hawaii, etc. The next pictures were of real life in Bavaria (very pleasant). Then the surprise. Images of present day war and turmoil all over the world. There were pictures of the drug wars in Mexico, pictures of Egypt, pictures of Africa, pictures of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars... This list goes on. The images were not merely of men standing solemnly with machine guns or soldiers rescuing a child from a demolished building (all there, but not as astonishing), but there were also images of death, suffering, and the worst pain. One was a series of images of a man being stoned to death for adultery. First the throwing of the stones, his bloodied body on the ground, more stone throwing, men pulling his body from the ground, his face a bloody pulp, his body limp with death. I stared, as though I was watching a movie, only I was trying to register that it was real. It is very real. Another picture was of the uncovered head of an 8 year old girl in a pile of rubble. Her eyes are closed, her face bloated and raw, her hair a frazzled mess, her lips parted. These pictures were so hard to look at and yet I couldn't leave. I couldn't cry, I couldn't talk, I could only look.
The last image I want to talk about is one of the Afghanistan war. It is of a young American soldier who was just shot and killed on the edge of a river being picked up by his comrades. It is slightly blurred as though in motion. The young mans face is scared, his body doesn't look right. In the caption below it told of the man's father who at first did not want the image to be displayed. He was soon persuaded upon hearing that most Americans would never see that image or any other of the reality in the Middle East.
Why is that? Why was I so shocked to see those images, as though I had never thought they existed? Probably none of you reading this will ever see those pictures. It is infuriating. Here in Germany they were posted in the middle of a MALL! A MALL! Something is not right. We are not being protected by not seeing these images, we are only going deeper and deeper within our own lives and the reality of the world is slipping by us in nice short clean pictures, nothing too sad, but sad enough to make us think we have seen the worst. What is wrong with this picture? You tell me.