Beating by Michael Francis McElroy
Ft Lauderdale, Florida .This unidentified man was attacked and beaten by 2 youths in broad daylight. Teen violence is a serious and rapidly growing problem in America. From the horrible incident at Columbine, Colorado, to the everyday incidents of youth violence, it is apparent that the problem is growing not shrinking. There are, according to most studies, several possible contributing factors which lead young people to violent behavior. One problem facing children growing up in America is today’s media bombardment. Children growing up in today’s media are learning all the wrong things at all the wrong times.
(editors note: this is a straight un-posed photograph of an actual event as so described -david alan harvey)
http://www.mmcelroy.com/index2.php
Unposed. Interesting word. But the selection going on in the photographers mind is obvious. Great above the fold photo.
DoPEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
That should be the new “Metallica” or “Pantera” album cover…:)
loves it!!!!!!!!
This is VICIOUS – with s SNAKE.
awesome Michael Francis McElroy
Unusual and obviously powerful composition for a “straight” news shot with great impact. Puts a bloody face on the issue.
So Michael, if you get a chance I would like to hear more about how this was taken, and your involvement, i.e. did you happen on this, how did you help the guy out, what was your first inclination, what were you thinking at the time? Always interested to hear the behind the scenes.
and I thought
it was a set up shot…
of
Christ…
scary..
violence,
yuck…
I want to know, as young Tom does….
what was going on?!?
shocking..
**
as you say, ‘this would make a nice album cover’
only if it wasnt for real
i wish dear brother you could be a little bit more sensitive
i am glad i am again looking into black space
and i hope anton does not fix IE8 errors…
this is so disturbing
i really do not want to look at this again
(well, i guess, your picture is effective
but i honestly hope you were able to help this kid.)
Hmmm, having actually been this guy years ago makes this photo personal to me as well.
this is the kind of shot that should win a world-press-photo award. It’s relative to a real-life issue that swells more and more each year, it has suggestive biblical iconography, the quality of the file is outstanding, the tonality of the image is perfect, and the effing severity of the subject is jaw-dropping.
i can’t help but share the fact that when i was twenty-two years old i happened on five or six teen-agers bullying a girl and quite naively thinking that these cute little munchkins would actually be afraid of both my size and relative age (when i was thirteen i was) i went to pull one of the boys off the girl (the girl would later would be treated for a broken jaw), as i reached for the first boy i was immediately dropped to the ground with a blow that came from behind with ‘some’ hard object. to make a long-story short the first thing i remember after a pack of boys took me to the ground was waking up in the hospital with a balloon inflated from my nose down the back of my throat from a partial face reconstruction that had two blood transfusions as a pre-requisite. Boys will be boys right?
i’ve seen this pack-behaviour four times since then, and maybe it did exist when i was thirteen, i don’t know. But two of those time have been in the last two years here in the UK both in broad daylight, and one was on a bus, very scary. My sister and her husband are both high school teachers in upstate NY teaching at the same school we all graduated from. The incident of students having go at teachers is not uncommon there now and it’s a drastic change in school culture there.
i’m not on some crusade against youth or anything, i just have more of a scientific interest in the whole thing. What is going on that a large population of youth don’t have the same health respect for adults that many of us had?
anyway, sorry for diverting the subject if i have, like i say it’s a wonderful photo and one that brings back some memories and one that i think is an exact piece of visual evidence that i hope finds its way into a basket of evidence in a meaningful report.
I respect Michael’s effort in bringing this issue up. Editor’s note was also helpful to clarify the point of ‘posing’ because on the first look, I had the feeling that this almost ‘crucified’ form (including composition and background) were deliberately ‘created’ to reiterate the issue. I was wrong.
Yet, I find this photograph quite a disturbing one! With due respect to the photographer’s effort, I wonder if there were no other way to portray the same thing without going into so much gory ‘details’!
Photographer’s note says (and quite correctly) that “One problem facing children growing up in America is today’s media bombardment. Children growing up in today’s media are learning all the wrong things at all the wrong times.”
But I wonder if this photograph is in itself a case in point of that very problem!
I am sorry that I am unable say that ‘I love’ this photo because (to my eyes) there is nothing ‘to love’ here. I don’t have the experience to know if this “the kind of shot that should win a world-press-photo award” but I personally feel there are more subtle ways to portray the same thing, because nobody wants a photograph to aggravate the problem itself.
In this respect, I would like to clarify my point with an example. Some years ago (in 2004, to be precise), a photographer (Arko Datta) from my city was awarded the top prize in world press photo. Here is the link to that photo:
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/index.php?option=com_photogallery&task=view&id=900&Itemid=115&bandwidth=low
It was a photo of a woman mourning a relative who had died in the devastating tsunami.
This photographer could have shot the photograph in different ways but he chose to shoot it this particular way because (his words) it’s gruesomeness would have distracted too much from the grieving subject of the picture, so he decided just to include the hand. I think that was one of the clinching factors in choosing the winner in that year’s world press photo award.
Michael, I am ready to apologize to you if I have said anything wrong. I just tried to point out what I thought should be pointed out in respect of these kind of subjects.
Wish you all the best in future…
Warm Regards,
bodo
BROKEN LINK – his website is http://www.mmcelroy.com/index2.php
bodo – i like your point and that WPP photo was a winner for exactally the reasons you state.
glad soemone mentioned jesus :ø)
it is often the case that the subjects of photos become complicit in the framing of a photo – drunk, beaten or high it´s amazing how people sometimes see what we are seeing and adjust themselves, which makes me wonder if that is what has happened here.. beaten kidd sees snapper shooting and raises arms.. i cannot see the snapper posing him like jesu.. tooooo inappropriate, perhaps.. unless there is a relationship between snapper and subject we don´t know about.
so.. i´d like to know more about whats gone on here.. the circumstance of the fight.. is this a victim or protagonsit.. how long after the fight.. posed or not..
having said that none of my desired questions are really relevant – as an example of illustrative editorial photography it works very well..
Hi Bodo,
I hear what you’re saying and I think I understand your sense of compassion. A feeling of photographer compassion can often be felt in the way a tog frames a subject and more so, evidence of photographer compassion can actually add narrative that wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t collect some evidence of sentiment from someone that was actually there.
maybe the photograph you linked actually collected some additional merit by the choice of framing in a ‘compassionate’ way. ‘Supposedly’ the framing made it less gruesome this way. Or, maybe there is a much more powerful illusion taking place and the framing is more to horrify then to reduce horror, let me try to explain.
Images like the one you link, that are deliberately framed to subtract information, to deliberately hold back information you might want to see, to deliberately prevent you from ever coming fully to grips with what is outside the frame lines, are using one of the most powerful tools in photography; it’s narrative at it’s best.
when used in this scenario you link, it’s not unlike the concept of the boogy-man. We don’t know what a boogy man looks like because it looks different to all of us; it’s simply the summation of all of our terror. The information we can’s see in the image you linked has all the power of the boogy-man because every individual will imagine what they think personally could be horrifically gruesome on the other side of the frame lines, the fact that the photographer even put the word ‘gruesomeness’ in our heads (why not ‘tragic’, or ‘sad’ or nothing at all) and then prevents us from knowing what ‘gruesomeness’ means to him makes the suggestive illusion even more powerful and more deliberate as it’s the summation of everything every individual finds gruesome to them. If that makes sense i hope you see the irony.
And with equal irony on this image above; you have a victim with a nose that has been exploded pinned to a graphical sandy canvas that looks like a scene from the crucification of Christ, it has block symmetry that reinforces this initial feeling and more so a canvas that incidentally has graffiti possibly left from some juvenile delinquents of a perfectly shape, un-exploded nose. We didn’t see the tsunami and we don’t see who did this to him. But we can ‘imagine’ all kinds of monsterous things as they are dubbed ‘teenagers’
This is also why images like this can become iconic to a meaningful cause. This a massive constellation of subject matter that triggers and reinforces a precise, exact emotion on both conscious and unconscious levels, arranged simply and honestly. It’s like a visual Edgar Allen Poe story. That is why i hope this image makes it somewhere worthy of its merit.
As far as WPP, i’ve less and less respect for it, this year making it even more suspect, there were better candidate images with better ‘World’ relevance. This year’s winner seems more like a backhander from the judge for not paying her photographer well enough when he did work for her, but that’s just bitter speculation caused by the fact that the tog was very good (albeit very poor now), but this year there were better images from equally good togs.
before anyone says it, i’ll say it. that WPP comment is out of line, i appreciate a single person doesn’t pick the winner and the suggested person is of outstanding character, i was just again bitter with the choice i suppose; and the historical circumstances make it easy to snipe.
the WPP comment made me smile joe – nothing wrong with being forthright, as you know.. no appology needed i think.
the past WPP winner linked by bodo is a great capture for me simply because it allows an editor to use the photo.. a photo of the full state of the corpse probably would not be used around most of the world, where the media is over sanitized.. i think that´s where the intelligence of the shot lies – it´s knowingly shot with the grieving woman in mind and also accepting of the fact that death is an uncomfortable sight which editors just will not use.
unless you are in norway, in which case dagbladdet will show EXACTLY what a child slaughtered by israeli soldiers looks like.. much to their credit in my opinion..
¨One problem facing children growing up in America is today’s media bombardment. Children growing up in today’s media are learning all the wrong things at all the wrong times.¨
this statement confuses me, probably because i am not exposed to the u.s. media..
i would rather see links to the studies which examine the reasons for teen violence, since the statement above does not give quantifiable information or directions on where to read about the media in relation to teen violence.
it confuses me because surely in the past the u.s. population has been far more exposed to violence – wars on television were more brutally reported than now, for example.. so what is the information which teenagers are getting and what is the right time for the information?
which might lead to the discussion – has violent music ever cause violence in the listener? does violence on tv lead to violence?
i wonder if the nihilism felt by young people in the west is more a product of malevolent government, the loss of individuality resulting from extreme capitalism and neglect on the part of government to interact with people regarding their actual needs, rather than leaning on rhetoric designed to appeal to the masses through opinion poll information rather than actions designed to enable a more compassionate society.. socialism has some great benefits, as we feel in norway and sweden.. with 10 weeks paid holiday, free health care and 12 months full paid maternity.. people feel engaged by government and looked after for their contributions.. people feel like citizens and not like consumers and care for a community because the greater community cares about them.
one of the greater contributing factors to the war-like mentality of football hooliganism in the u.k. can be traced back to the way in which the working classes were lied to about the reasons, motivation and benefits of the british empire, only 50 or 60 years earlier.. a superiority based on racism and warped Darwinism which still leaves trace problems today..
america has been lying to it´s people about the current wars.. the motivation.. the results.. the exit strategies being solely about commerce and creation of new business for the friends and colleagues of the governing people.
i wonder – is it not the leaders of the country who have set the president for extreme violence and terror rather than the tv media who report on it? because the american people have been lied to – as colonial powers lie to their people as a matter of course.. and the reaction must stem from that, i think.
i mean – how COULD there be arrangements for airforce one and a fighter jet to fly low over new york without even a warning to the mayor.. a public campaign to prevent panic, given the events of 9-11.. the insensitivity of the AF1 flyby leaves people on the outside incredulous as to the blatant lack of respect and regard for the population on america by those who hold the reigns.. the level of neglect illustrated could be a metaphor, could it not?
:ø)
I find this image seriously disturbing.
Perhaps even more so because my initial assumption was that it was a rather predictable take on religious iconography. On reading the text I find myself captured by horror that is represented here. I remember a colleague asking ‘what is wrong with kids today?’ as though they were nothing to do with ‘us’. Perhaps the most distressing side of this image is that it asks us how we have contributed to the brutal modern values that lead to incidents like this.
SM
this says it best for me :ø)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO18F4aKGzQ
¨Lyrics to Uncle Sam Goddamn :
Ah,
The name of this song is uncle sam goddamn
It’s a show tune but the show aint been written for it yet.
Were gonna see if tony Jerome and the band can maybe work this shit out for me
And straighten me out right quick
I like it so far man
Yeah
Come on, lets go
Welcome to the united snakes
Land of the thief, home of the slave
Grand imperial guard where the dollar is sacred
Come on lets do this shit for real now
Smoke and mirrors, stripes and stars
Stoner for the cross in the name of god
Bloodshed, genocide, rape and fraud
Written to the pages of the law, good lord
The (inaudible) and latch key child
Ran away one day and started acting vile
King of where the wild things are, daddy’s proud
Cause the roman empire done passed it down
Imported and tortured the work force
They never healed the wounds or shook the curse off
Now the grown up goliath nation
Holdin open auditions for the part of david, can you feel?
Nothing can save you, you question the rain
You get rushed in and chained up
fists raised but I must be insane
Cause I cant figure a single goddamn way to change it
Welcome to the united snakes
Land of the thief, home of the slave
Grant imperial guard where the dollar is sacred
And power is god
Welcome to the united snakes
Land of the thief, home of the slave
Grant imperial guard where the dollar is sacred
And power is god
We all must bow to the fact were lazy
The fuck you obey me and why do you hate me
Only two generations away from the
Worlds most despicable slavery trade
Pioneered so many ways to degrade a human being
That it cant be chains to this day
Legacy so ingrained in the way that we think
We don’t need to wear chains to be slaves
Lord that’s a sinful display
The overseers even got raped along the way
Cause the children cant escape from the pain
And theyre born with the pores and this hatred in their veins
Try and separate a man from his soul
Youll only strengthen him and lose your own
Well shoot that fucker if he walk near the throne
Remind him that this is my home (now im gone)
Welcome to the united snakes
Land of the thief, home of the slave
Grant imperial guard where the dollar is sacred
And power is god
Welcome to the united snakes
Land of the thief, home of the slave
Grant imperial guard where the dollar is sacred
Hold up, gimme one right here
You don’t give money to the bums
On the corner with a sign, bleeding from their gums
Talking about you don’t support a crackhead
What you think happens to the money from yo’ taxes
Shit the governments an addict
With a billion dollar a week kill brown people habit
And even if you aint on the front line
When the master yell crunch time you right back at it
You aint look at how you hustling backwards
And the end of the year add up what they subtracted
3 outta twelve months your salary
Paid for that madness, man that’s sadness
Whats left get a big ass plasma
To see where they made dan rather point the damn camera
Only approved questions get answered
Now stand your ass up for that national anthem
Welcome to the united snakes
Land of the thief, home of the slave
Grant imperial guard where the dollar is sacred
And power is god
Welcome to the united snakes
Land of the thief, home of the slave
Grant imperial guard where the dollar is sacred
And power is god
[instrumental break]
Custom made, the consumer news
Keep saying we’re free
But were all just blue¨
Well all the debate is fantastic, but I’d dearly love to hear David’s opinion on this image. “Not posed”, but hey, posed is the very first word that came into my head.
I’d like to hear more background on this image too, although I suspect there is more to come…it’s just that it’s hard to see the process that’s going on when there’s just one image.
It’s a fantastic capture, and bravely done by Michael, as it’s easy to lose one’s composure when confonted by situations such as this.
Bravo! Let’s see and hear more!
Just as I just wrote under Nathaniel’s powerful and heart-breaking portrait ‘Bullet Catcher”, the power of Michael’s photograph again lay in it’s immediate and potent ability to contravene our immediate expectation. As with Laura Boushnak’s “Survivor,” we arrive at an immediate conclusion upon first viewing (a conceptual art portrait, staged or reflected, as a metaphor for Christ’s crucifixtion) only to look more closely and see that the blood is real, that the expression in the eye is both shock and exhaustion and stunned confusion and then we realize that this isnt some portrait shoot for a Death/Black-Metal music album, but a harrowing moment after a young boy has been attacked…
as Jim correctly points out, as a newspaper shot, it would make a brilliant and perfect above-the fold cover. I was reminded of Anton Lazarus Hammerl famous shot of the young boy being attacked in Africa (cant remember the country) or the famous shot from Haiti of the boys being beaten (haviv, knight?, cant rmemember)….but also, the power of this image comes from the extraordinary tension between the reality of the moment and it’s visual metaphoric power. Remember Tyler Hicks extraordinary ‘pieta’ photogrpah from the Lebanon war two years ago, and all the derisive comments he’d received by people who thought it was ‘staged’ or who felt it was too ‘set up’ all that nonsense, when in truth, the power of a great photography and the skill of a great photographer lay in the ability to experience the moment, to see a moment unfolding and to react, to sense that inside that moment, may come a picture that contains all the power of both truthful story telling and metaphor (we need both in our lives)….
it’s been a powerful and heartbreaking expeprience to go one-on-one with both these photographs of young adults. As a father (forget the photographer’s hat) who has a teenage son who was a victim last year of violence and assault, my heart just breaks at the continual perpetration of this, whether it’s youth-on-youth or adult-on-youth (sending sons and daughter to kill and to die), it just staggers me that we still have not materialized, as a society, as a world, our bogus claims of civilization and progress. We still live in dark days and that we’ve let our children down this path is, to me, such a profound sadness.
A powerful and important photograph and I thank you for sharing it with us
all the best
bob
David Bowen:
the United States has no strangehold on miscreant behavior, nor on enmity, arrogance, and idiocity….we’ve all done our part in failing to teach our children and make nations built not on empty things but on something else….sadly, most of us, are still beasts…maybe our human plight is that we’ve deluded ourselves to think otherwise….we nest ourselves amid our material and spiritual and intellectual comfort, failing to see, most of the time, the awful mess we’ve done…that there are children on the street, or people go without food or shelter or care in a world satied with wealth is an indication that the all are equally to blame….
cheers
bob
I think it’s important to bear in mind that children do not grow up in a vacuum, so to speak. What is happening inside the family early on in their lives is far more important that anything they may or not be exposed on on TV, in films and on the internet.
In areas of our cities where youth violence, gangs etc are problems you have to wonder what has caused the wholesale collapse of the family and community structures that existed in years gone by.
In that sense, your concerns about media influence need to be traced back far further than this current generation – we need to be looking at what was happening in the seventies and eighties, when today’s parents were brought up. I too am skeptical about the media argument…the media always seems to me to be a convenient distraction from where the real issues are.
This is a powerful, raw and shocking image but can the subject’s posture really be unposed? I’d love to know how the photographer came to be in the position of shooting this so soon after the incident.
The story of this picture is, i was driving home from assignment. At a red light i saw out of the corner of my eye this kid running for his life as two other youths chased after him. The victim was trying to reach a storefront door for safety, but at the moment he reached for it the others had caught up to him and started to kick and punch him!!! it lasted for 30seconds and they ran! i followed the two who had gave the beating while on the phone with 911. After I saw where the kids had gone and told the police, i turned around and drove back to the scene. I saw the victim in a parking lot stumbling around, talking to a community service aid who ask him to step out of the way of traffic and stand over by the wall! he was very disoriented and weak from the loss of blood, he leaned on the wall spread his arms ( if you look at the photograph you can see he is holding onto the bricks to keep his balance) that is when i shot 5 frames before he was taken away by EMS. I wouldn’t have shot this any other way! this cannot be compared to a photograph of someone who was in mourning! they are two completely different scenarios! I think we need to be shocked! we need to see what really goes on in our world…
wow, thanks for explaining
you´re quite right bob – we all do have to work our way out of past errors as individuals and communities, regardless of the examples set by governments.. but the governments do set such powerful examples…
i believe around 30 million native americans were killed by the british..
my hope is that the examples being set are changing.. torture briefs being released, u.s. prison ships being decommissioned along with Guantanamo..
i guess my overall point is that a population lied to for whatever reason is going to be deeply scared – a population lied to in justification for violence and capitalist pursuits may fair worse than most.
i agree that we all have to do what we can – the focus on the u.s. was simply due to the focus of the text above being about a u.s. problem.. a photo concerning knife crime in the u.k. or mafia in croatia and the subject would have differed.
it is an astonishingly complex problem obviously – and it is heartening to see steps being taken to reveal and abruptly end some of the bad examples being set by the previous administration in the u.s.
all know that violence begets violence and we have to take our individual responsibility in dealing with the problems – for me, talking about the prime example-setters, or governments, is part of that process.
Ciara, i couldn’t agree with you more.
Sometimes i wonder if the cause is as simple as the dual-income family-structure that is more prevalent now than it was before, sometimes i wonder if it was that both our parents and even our school principals were able to own and use a paddle on us when we were growing up, sometimes i wonder if it’s both, in that we get less of a road map from our parents than we used to so it’s the school that dispatches that road map which includes a healthy respect for adults, but because they’ve been declawed they can’t dispatch appropriate discipline that leads to a healthy roadmap.
sometimes i think it’s something far more radical, something far simpler, and ultimately something far scarier in its logical conclusion, it’s the optimisation of our legal system that started in the States and has now infected the U.K.
it’s the growing philosophy that you should have such over-whelming rights related to the pursuit of happiness. And these rights should be provided to you by the state. Rights so wide-sweeping that you can sue for damages if anything causes you any harm or even dissatisfaction.
it’s the kind of exoneration of personal responsibility that will allow you to sue McDonalds for millions for making the coffee too hot for you to pour in your lap while you drive down the road (real story)
now a days no one is personally responsible for anything we do now and if something bad happens to us there is someone that should get sued. It’s a blame culture with a horrible side affect of little-to-no personal responsibility for our decisions. The insurance companies just eat it up. This theory reconciles perfectly with why we would blame the media for our woes verses blaming each other for not helping our children understanding the context of media, media that has always existed.
i wonder allot of things, but i don’t wonder if there is a trend in the propensity for the mal-behaviour and i don’t wonder at the speed at which that trend has manifested itself, and now i don’t even wonder if it is a local phenomena as I’ve seen it in the UK and also through my own high-school.
Joe, it’s true. we were burgled a couple of weeks ago – they came through the back alley of our terraced street, over our six-foot high wall and smashed their way into our kitchen. the police have told us we can’t put barbed wire, glass or anything too thorny up that back wall to try to stop this happening again because a burglar could injure himself and sue us. i mean, wtf?
sorry, i digress from the image. but great images sometimes kick start interesting debates
Thank you, Michael, for sharing with us the details of how this photo came to be made. But, more importantly, thank you for following the attackers, calling 911 and then returning to see if you could help the victim.
I first looked at your photo in the middle of last night at around 4:30 a.m. and it stayed with me waking and sleeping until now. It is a disturbing image, to say the least. But it is reality. Unfortunately. And whether we want to or not, we must face reality head on. It’s all too easy to read about beatings, stabbings, people being gunned down and see them as they are portrayed in movies or TV shows. That only perpetuates the sense of unreality.
I really dislike this photo not because it’s poorly done–it’s superbly done–but because I don’t want to see this kind of suffering that we bring on one another. But I know I must and so I commend you for taking it and showing it here. It’s hard enough to look at the photo; I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you to experience this in person. I hope the young man is healed of his wounds annd has found safety.
Patricia
Gracie…:)))
Yes you’re right about being more sensitive..
It’s just once again I got busted NOT Reading the text..
I did too think it was staged…
The Christ “pose” was so obvious to ignore…
(..& now tongue in cheek or cheek on toe… I still think
It could make it to a heavy metal album cover..)
Either way, morning y’all from the sunny City of Angels…
I do like the photo. But, I have a problem with the information given. And I haven’t checked this in a couple of years, so it very well could have changed, but the last time I saw the numbers on youth violence, especially murder, they were actually down. The stories of murders get more publicized because they tend to be more, I guess you might say, bizarre? But the actual numbers, and again this was a few years ago so it could have changed, but they have dropped and were lower than in decades. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see that the numbers have risen again—it’s normal for violent crimes to rise in times of economic recession. But this is making a very broad statement without any real evidence to back it up.
If anyone has checked the numbers on youth violence (I believe the surgeon general puts those out), then please show it. But if you want to talk about a problem with the media, the first on my list is when they create problems, or misrepresent problems. And this happens when they don’t present strong evidence to support their claims, especially the big ones.
A “great above the fold photo”?
Jim, there is not a newspaper that would touch it.
A youth problem? An American problem? Unfortunately, this kind of violence and brutality have always been with us. Just think of what a crucifixion depicts. It was a common method of execution, slow bloody and public. Ever watch the movie Brave Heart? Native tribes in eastern Canada are documented as having tortured captives for long periods, leaving them tied up and encouraging children to participate. I could just go on and on here. It seems we have not come very far.
The general public just doesn’t want to see it. No pictures of dead soldiers or their victims please, or any other gory mutilated bodies.
I hope your photograph finds a place to be heard Michael.
Gordon L.
I would like to comment on this photo from a philosophical point of view… At least my own philosophical point of view…
“It brings right into your face the miserable, absurd and unfortunate problem(s) with our world today, and I don’t think it’s simply the fact that this guy was beat up”.
It is obviously a horrible beating and I don’t think justifiable regardless of the situation it happened for, however, I am pretty sure that while Michael was calling 911 he was also trying to figure out a way to get the exact shot he did… “Congratulations”
I have heard so many phoographers talk about getting certain shots of War, drugs, cancer, prostitution, starvation etc. in order to shed light on and bring attention to a subject in order to make it better… Was that your intention here with regards to youth violence? Are you going to follow this up with a series of images that actually tell a story that pushes society as a whole want to do something about it? Are you already working on such a project? I’m just curious…
Unfortunately, it’s my belief that these kind of images and further, celebrating them, “which is what “we” largely do, adds directly to the greater problem” along with the cop shows, court shows, reality shows, news etc…
This picture would not be published in a newspaper, for so many reasons. Probably less of this guys suffering than the likeness to JC and the risk of offending people… although, it certainly would be a candidate for an award at any photo conference…
Again I am sorry for lashing out hopefully this note is better tempered than my others and it really is about more than the photo.
I am currently traveling and I am staying in a hostel, I am saturated with pseudo intellectual, college student, coffee shop type arguments about the world and how fucked up and evil it is. I’m just tired of it. I have traveled to maybe 60 different countries in my life and have never seen anything like what we see on the news and in these types of photos. I’m not just lucky either, I travel mostly in third world countries and off the tourist trail… Sure there is bad in the world and OBVIOUSLY bad sells and gets peoples attention. However, by enlarge these images serve as entertainment nowadays. There are lots of images and photogs that do in fact do good, Natczaway or Salgado for example and I know they are tough to emulate however, you will rarely see a shock value photo in their work although their work is very shocking…
I just think celebrating images like this in any way, weather it’s for an award or an album cover sends the wrong message. As boring as it may be, I’d rather see a great shot of a little old lady being helped across the street by a tattooed street thug.
Be on the look out all you Bresson’s because I’m certain that does happen…
Jumping back to the “youth of today” there is a trend in the UK for gangs to start fights and “slappings” just so they can record them on their mobiles?
While I think it is a powerful and raw photograph with a lot of shock value, more so with the later description of the events behind the taking of it, it cannot travel far in the media because it is too much for people to be able to view it. They will just turn away from it, at the same time it is overly dramatic for an incident so sadly common. I’m reminded of Bad Boys 2 where the visual were amazing for such a simple film, both were wasted in this case.
The religious take, while obviously referential can in fact get in the way of any deeper analysis. There was no death here nor sacrifice on his part for our sins so the gesture becomes co-incidental and empty for me after a while. Thinking aloud here but would it be more powerful say if it was a woman or an ethnic, people can tend to react more to when it isn’t a white man?
For this image to work, I has to instigate change and then be referred to instead.
@Ian Aitken: Happy Slappings haven’t been reported in a while, I forgot they existed as well. I also only ever heard about them through, *drum roll* please… the media.
But it isn’t all doom and gloom, my current project is about youth culture and it is a positive take on that subject to go against the grain of commonly reporting negative aspects to youths. Something which I did email DAH about (after expressing interest) but never got a reply! Wink wink.
Gordon and Ross…
As director of photography at a newspaper in Virginia, let me chime in here. If one of my staffers came back with this photo from a breaking news event, I would be thrilled. (well not thrilled, but you get the idea)
Yes we would run it! And yes it would be the lead photo on the page. This is of course provided that we had the man’s name. Which, if it was reported to police, we would have.
This is a great image.
Of course it needs context. Such as a headline saying something like: ” Local Man Beaten by Teens”
And the cutline explaining further, what it obviously is… “(name) takes a moment to compose himself following an altercation in which he was beaten by two teenagers.”
I think part of the problem is that most viewers of THIS image on THIS SITE, are initially seeing it differently than if you picked up the paper and saw it on the front page.
Here there are a huge variety of images being posted and many of them are not news images. We see portraits and conceptual images here all the time and at first glance it is easy to assume that this falls into one of those categories.
As David said on the Bullet Catcher post….. “.text, context, are usually necessary for most work…”
That “context” includes the vehicle in which it is published.
Yeah, I’d forgotten too, untill this. I’m not a doom monger, there is plenty to inspire us about todays youth.
JONATHANJK..
just read your comment and immediately did an e-mail search with your name…came up with nothing…what is your e-address??
I was wondering if the victim knew that he was being photographed. I don’t think that I could have done it, feeling it would be a violation of this individual’s privacy. On the other hand, a picture like this could be used as evidence to put the offenders away for a while.
I like this picture a lot. I must have been in a similar state a couple of times in my teens, head wounds bleed a lot. We are a violent species. Some idiot teens like to fight, for rank etc. Not being an idiot doesn’t help when someone is giving you a good shoeing. The good thing is that most people grow out of it in their mid 20′s.
I don’t think that this picture highlights some of things people are mentioning here. Who knows maybe he even deserved it?
While it is a fine line to walk when covering a news event such as a fire, accident, murder, etc., photojournalists have a job to do. Yes we have to be compassionate and aware of a victims feelings, but we also have a duty to report the incident. The general rule that I believe most photojournalists follow, is that if we are upsetting the subject, we back off. I personally try to be very discreet when working these situations. But we also believe in getting the image and then we make the call to run it later.
Many times I have been in situations where I am shooting from a reasonable distance (70-200mm) and the subject will notice me and turn away. That is the cue to stop and find something else to shoot.
Covering something like this, and knowing when and what to shoot, unfortunately only comes with experience. This cannot be learned in a class or a book. Each situation will be different and it is always a judgement call on the part of the photographer.
That being said, as a rule of law, a person in a public venue does not have an expectation of privacy.
Wow! Powerful image! Yes, at first glance I thought it was posed too. Very sad to hear that it was not, and the story behind the image.
Not that this was the case, but I hadn’t heard of the “Happy Slapping’s” What a brutal, sad and selfish act. Shameful!
Oops! no need for a contraction there…
pete – i think you have hit the nail on the head as to why a newspaper could not use it.. there is no information.. and so as a spot news photo elements which would be essential are missing.
i think it would be published in a contextual form alongside an article about fighting / violence which needed a photo – an illustrative snap perhaps… although again it may depend upon the angle of the article.
i think a record cover, although it would be iconic, is out of the question unless michael shoved a model release form under his flattened nose.. which thankfully he seems not to have..
violence, poverty and suffering.. horrible things to photograph and ethical minefields if the motivation is out of whack.
:ø)
David Bowen, what I am saying is it WOULD be used (depending on the paper). Because it WOULD have a headline and caption explaining it.
I’m not a lifetime newspaper veteran however, I have worked at a couple and done plenty od photojournalism and ethics workshops I do know a bit. Pete, if you say your paper would publish it then I suppose that is the case. I still believe that is hardly publishable and wouldn’t even be considered at most papers in the states, especially as a spot news feature, unless it was part of some massive city wide riot or something extremely relevant…
Hey David, my email is jonathanjk at me dot com. Thanks.
I think this is a very strong image which evokes many things. The debate makes me think about the (unresolved) issue of “beautification” of violence when for example war photos depiciting real pain and suffering are so visially beautiful that they almost detour the attention from the issue. The problem with this is that a viewer turns into a passive “voyeur”, like a museum visitor. It’s a difficult one. I think if one chooses to show a photo depicting pain and suffering of others there must be a good reason for doing it. A message, if you will, which goes beyond the visual appreciation part. It’s wonderful to know that the photographer came to his eventual “model’s” rescue.
Ross
I agree that there are some papers that would not run it. I have actually been surprised recently by two winning photos in the NPPA clip contest. Both of dead bodies and both supposedly ran in the papers ( a requirement to be entered in the clip contest).
Apparently times they are a changing.
Pete
No doubt about that… and your right. My newspaper days were a while ago and short lived at that. Back then and certainly where I was there wasn’t a snowballs chance in hell fora photo like that… Further, I didn’t know that the NPPA now had a dead bodies section in the contest… That makes me very sad and lowers the NPPA’s integrity and legitimacy in my eyes…
I did a story at the mountain workshops where I followed a coroner for a week. Took shots of lots of dead people. Took some sensitive ones as well as some pretty shocking one’s, the debate that followed at the workshops was fierce. I was aghast as a young wannabe photojournalist that what I thought my best shots were wouldn’t even be shown as part of the slideshow at the workshop(ethical considerations). I was pissed… Another time I got a shot of a fireman hugging his mother after her (his mother’s) house burned down. The paper wouldn’t run it because it was a small town etc. Again I was pissed, the same small town pulled that stuff with me several more times and I finally moved on to another paper… I guess it just depends on the paper… Now as I have aged my thoughts about hardcore photojournalism and at what cost I suppose has changed a bit… I think there is a better more responsible way to convey a message than shock value, no matter how graphically good or beautifully lit the photo is…
PETE…ROSS
i think this photograph would not run in most places and will win contests in all places…your thoughts on contests vs. newspaper responsibility to readers??
DAH
Not sure I follow? Responsibility to readers?