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The value of images of people about to die

Posted at 10:52 AM on December 4, 2012 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media

As I mentioned in 5x8 this morning, the New York Post printed a photograph of a man who had just been pushed in front of a New York City subway train. Moments after the freelance photographer took the picture, the man was dead.

What is to be gained by publishing the picture? It's a question that haunts journalists who make these decisions.

It's fairly easy for me to say "nothing," and then I recalled one of the most compelling photographs I've ever seen.

I was living in Boston in June 1975, not far from the spot where the great photographer Stanley Foreman took this picture of Diana Bryant, and the girl, Tiare Jones, when the fire escape collapsed. They'd sought shelter on it when fire engulfed their apartment. A radio traffic reporter landed his helicopter on the building trying to save them when it gave way. A fire ladder was just inches from reaching them.

Such are the frailties of life.

For this picture, Foreman was awarded a Pulitzer. And Boston strengthened its fire code.

"We're squeamish because news pictures of the dead and dying are of real people and real events. If a news image works, it penetrates, lingers, forces our attention to the events involving death that it depicts," Barbie Zelizer, the author of About To Die: How News Images Move the Public, said in an interview with Slate last year. "If a news image works, it doesn't disappear when we cast aside the newspaper, dim the TV or turn off the Internet. That may be more intrusion than most people are willing to allow."

Images of the moment of death stay with us in a way a few paragraphs in a newspaper cannot. This image of a Loyalist's moment of death in the Spanish Civil War haunts us still.

As does the moment when Lee Harvey Oswald was killed in 1963.

"Where images of dead bodies often push viewers away, creating a sense of distance and objectification, images of impending death do the opposite: They often draw viewers in, fostering engagement, creating empathy and subjective involvement, inviting debate," Zelizer said.

Comments (6)

My gut reaction to the 5x8 bit was essentially "just because you can doesn't mean you should."

Thanks for a great follow-up to a tough topic.

Posted by Dylan Kvasnicka | December 4, 2012 11:10 AM

The documentary, The Falling Man also took this on in the context of Twin Towers falling on 9/11.

The extra layer of complexity it had to examine was family members' perceptions of suicide. The most difficult moment of the film, for me as a survivor of a loved one's suicide, was a daughter explaining that, if she believed her dad had jumped, his entire life legacy with his family and faith community would be rendered moot.

Posted by Bose in St. Peter MN | December 4, 2012 1:29 PM

Question: Do you recall how the other pictures were originally presented?

Was the Foreman picture superimposed with a blaring "DOOMED" headline?

Speaking for myself, I think it's the tabloid headline, rather than the picture itself that causes the negative reaction.

The moments captured in these pictures deserve a bit more dignity than the Post's headline grants, which reduces it to one of those old detective or true crime pulp magazines.

Posted by David G | December 4, 2012 1:55 PM

Yes, I agree with this point; I just posted something similar on Twitter. It's the headline, not the picture.

Posted by Bob Collins | December 4, 2012 2:36 PM

The Robert Capa photo was staged.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1912110,00.html

Posted by David Putney | December 4, 2012 3:02 PM

Over the years, my question has been this:

"Why didn't the photographer throw down his
camera and attempt to save the victim?"

The answer, it seems, is in the "money quote" of this post:

Well, I know where I would stand.....

Posted by Duke Powell | December 6, 2012 4:42 PM