Do you think a British newspaper would use this as their frontpage?
It's safe for work, not gory or anything - but quite shocking/upsetting:
I can't imagine even the Sun would run a similar pic here.
And more broadly, what is the role of the photographer- to help someone, or take pictures?
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jfc
In the story he alledges that he has the photo cos he was using the flash to try and warn the driver
A likely story but hey, maybe it's true
Besides apparently it happened so fast no one managed to get to him in time
lol at using flash to warn the driver rather than spending
the 30 or 40 seconds trying to help the guy. Just happens to get a decent shot and sell it. He tried his best though. Not to mention everyone else on the platform leaving him there. I can imagine shock plays a part but still.
Maybe I read the story wrong earlier this morning
But I don't think there was 30 or 40 seconds.
The guy had only only just got to the edge of the platform by the time the train came.
He was also apparently hammered which made him moving quite difficult.
Don't think anyone could've done anything to help much more than they did
Also the driver said he saw the flashes and tried to slow down
So who knows
cmon
what a load of shit.
he had time to assess the scene, decide that he wasnt “strong enough to physically lift the victim himself”, then pull out his camera and start flashing it.
and just by chance lands a perfectly composed shot? which he has then (presumably) profited from.
total fucking cunt.
The driver said he saw the flashes and tried to slow down
So.
And if you'd read my initial post I poured scorn on the idea, but I thought it'd be interesting to open the discussion based on what I'd read in the Post this morning. Obviously just lumping in and calling him a cunt was the way forward
no I got that, not having a go at you
it's just whether or not he could help him seems irrelevant, it's more the fact that the photographer made a conscious decision not to try and pull the guy up but rather just snap photos that I can't get over.
im jsut going on what ive read about the place
and heard it was 30-40 seconds, dont know how true that is. Also think this guy has to actually get out his camera, switch it on, get the lens cap off, get the pic in focus and start taking perfectly composed pics. I dont think anyone in that moment would ever think 'the camera's flash will alert the driver'. If your first instinct is to reach for your camera, its because you wanna take a pic.
He's a professional photographer, fwiw
so he would have had his camera to hand already. It's not like he was rummaging in his man-bag for it.
*freelance photographer
which i think is code for hipster bum. I assume he has a camera bag.
Look, Lee Harvey Oswald managed to get all those shots into Kennedy without an automatic rifle.
If this dude was a camera god I guess he could have done it.
FWIW, I don't think any behaves rationally in these situations. Thinking time is all well and good but you need to have some kind of notion of what you could do. It's fine to say, "Oh yeah, I'd have rushed over to help him," but a lot you is caught up in trying to make sense of something like this happening at all, I would think.
no i don't think the sun would use a photo of a single death in the New York subway as their front page
unless it was a celebrity.
role of photographer is to take pictures
role of a human is to help
god i knew that would sound twatty and trite before i even started to type it and yet i still did it jeeees
trite but right
Surely he should be running over and pulling him out rather than getting the perfect shot
In what way though
is that the perfect shot?
Everyone moaning about the camera man - it takes 1 60th of a second to take a photograph. Don't be total fucking idiot cunts.
that wasn't really meant at you
Aaron - more the people upstairs.
I wonder how long the decision to sell a deeply upsetting photograph
produced on as a byproduct of a desire to alert the driver to impending tragedy, using a means neither party had any previous fluency in, for profit took to make. More or less than a 60th of a second?
I wouldn't really get on any one individual's back about this, but it is sad. Even if you accept why the photo was taken, it's difficult to countenance why people would seek to sell and print it. But a lot of good people would.
Sad, really.
Do we even know that he definitely sold it?
Yep.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/05/r-umar-abbasi-ny-post-subway-photo-ki-suk-han_n_2243739.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
oh wow - what a dick
I can understand him not helping him, there would have been plenty of people there and they wouldn't have had long etc. etc.
But selling the photo of a man about to die is ridiculous.
I don't think any *good* people would, tbh
Could get into a real mile-a-minute discussion here about what 'good' means
but we shouldn't ... I think most people perform moral gymnastics and overcome dissonance without really even being aware that's what they're doing.
didn't the sun
post michael jackson's corpse being wheeled out his house on the front page?
Gigwise published a series of photos from Amy Winehouse's private funeral.
yeah that's very comparable
No idea, but it's not very nice that anyone would print that
Christ
I mean I get that you can never truly know what you would do in a situation like this, and I can completely understand how you would freeze and be unable to help the person. But how the hell could your automatic reaction to this be to take a picture?
It's an interesting moral question
Often wondered about photographers/cameramen in warzones etc taking pictures of the dead/dying. Where is the line drawn? Do they continue to do their job come what may, or is there a point when they put down the camera and help people? I also remember the pictures of the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings and wondered how the survivors felt when they made it out into the street and had cameras pointed at them.
in warzones and things of that nature
the photographer could claim they are helping by exposing the public to the atrocities of certain situations.
but this? the guy sees someone dying and thinks he can make a few quid out of it
^fair point
Not to mention
as soon as you take yourself out of the role of neutral observer and start helping individuals, you effectively put yourself at risk from their enemy.
Jesus.
That's horrible.
As is the way with these things, if it travels about the web enough someone will get track down the snapper and get him/her to make a statement about what on earth they were thinking.
Just noticed the text below the photo which I missed first time.
I'll be haunted by that like I've been haunted by this one since first seeing it:
http://www.archive.worldpressphoto.org/search/layout/result/indeling/detailwpp/form/wpp/q/ishoofdafbeelding/true/trefwoord/year/1975
Even though I always try and avoid footage of people dying in real life, I'll always look at the photos. Why is that I wonder?
Christ.
Hm.
The 9/11 'falling man' is very chilling also
This is my mates subway stop.
He is understandably a bit shaken.
they missed a really inapproriate but high indie point scoring use of
At the Drive-in lyrics there
...
Evil Sean
:(
plus if it's not too inappropriate to run to pedants corner
it's not a freight train.
ban him joey, go on!
the bystander effect, huh
^I guess the difference being that none of Kitty Genovese's neighbours
popped round to take a few pictures when they heard her screaming
bystander 2.0
We're so atomised we take avoidable death 2 b bloggable
this is sort of like the ultimate extension of how people are always taking photos at gigs instead of watching the gig
i knew there was a reason that annoyed me.
.
so...........
i think its obvious that in situations like this anyone's primary responsibility is to help someone in need. It's totally different to a warzone assignment.
I don't know if the CAMERA FLASH TO ALERT THE DRIVER story is legit at all, but regardless it's pretty horrific to profit like this from someones death. There's no need for the photograph at all - everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves
That's it isn't it
When the photographer tried to sell the photo to the paper they should have just gone 'errrr, no' and that would be the end of it. It's a shocking photo for the context of someone taking the photo, it's not shocking that someone fell in front of a subway and died. Horribly sad, but not a shock
totes
just makes me :(
*was pushed
still
This reminds me of that famous photo of that desperately malnourished child in Africa(?) where
the hawk was watching over him like prey, waiting for him to die. The photographer expressed regret for not doing anything, but described this "photographers instinct" kinda thing that overtakes you. I guess it's comparable to the whole "i was only doing my job" mindset.
He committed suicide a few years later, likely partly because of this incident which he regretted not stepping in and doing something about. Imagine that though. Having that photo haunt you for your entire life. As people have said, it's a massive moral question, but I know I personally couldn't hack that kinda thing.
I wonder how this photographer feels about this now. Because despite whether he could help or not, he's going to have this image ingrained into his psyche for the rest of his life. Really grim stuff :(
i still see that as different though
that's a problem with a while country/continent (or whatever) and it helps for the rest of the world to know about these things. what could he have done? given the child some bread? wouldn't have made any difference really.
the photo in the OP was an accident, that guy was in a situation he shouldn't have been in, it isn't something where there is any benefit to the world seeing it.
But the whole ''shouldn't help one person cos you can't help every person'' is a bit of a crap attitude to have.
We're not talking about helping a someone with a buggy does the stairs cos you're in a rush it's a staving child that's about to be carrion. You could pick it up and give it to the Red Cross or something. At least try.
no, that's fair
i just meant generally that it was probably more worthy of a photo and recognition than a guy that was about to be hit by a train.
Good point, but I think the fact still remains that he basically watched a kid die
I was under the impression that there was an aid camp not too far away.
True, but he took the photo instead of acting on what should really have been a triggered human instinct. The photo taken may have had the shock-appeal necessary to stir people into acting, but at the end of the day this is a complete disregard for human life
Exactly
and see my point below about taking the picture and then helping the child. It's not an either/or situation, that kid was still sat there.
yeah, i do agree with both of you, like i said above
The story behind the photo isn't exactly clear, but I don't think he watched the kid die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter
And I don't think by any stretch he was a bad guy, he seemed highly moral and principled.
thanks wikipedia
Am I really that dull? :(
sorry i'm not as quirky as some of the posters here
ignore him.
Wasn't Kevin Carter was it?
Thing is, how long does it take to take a photo? A few seconds? What's to stop him getting that Pulitzer prize winning photo and THEN going to help the starving kid? Or does he just walk away thinking of how cool it'll look in a centre glossy in Time magazine?
apparently it was yeah, and the subject of the song which
after looking it up, turns out has awful lyrics
Haha, all I know of it is that they repeat his name in the chorus which is a bit crap
i really hate the MSP
Hi Time magazine hi Pulitzer Prize
Tribal scars in Technicolor
Bang bang club AK 47 hour
Kevin Carter
Hi Time magazine hi Pulitzer Prize
Vulture stalked white piped lie forever
Wasted your life in black and white
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
The elephant is so ugly he sleeps his head
Machetes his bed Kevin Carter kaffir lover forever
Click click click click click
Click himself under
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter
I'm guessing they're Nicky Wires...
but when I see Manic's lyrics written down I always think fair play to JDB for managing to craft those awkward lyrics into a pop song.
shit shit, i just remembered something great
one sec
hilarious spoken word rendition of some RHCP lyrics from BSSM
http://amoebic.tumblr.com/post/33957262030/wfmu-wfmus-newrekkid-of-the-day-phil
probably worth a thread
I just did a bit of digging
and i think they were written by Richey. Which wouldn't surprise me, does sound quite cynical, 'Holy Bible'-ish. MSBP or whatever would probably know, where is he
Also in my post up there I mention Time magazine and Pulitzer prize
and had no idea that they were also in the lyrics or whether or not Kevin Carter ever won it.
yeah he won it
I can't believe this entire time
I've been listening to that song and had no idea that this was the background O.O well that really changes things doesn't it
People die horribly and strangely every day. Most die peacefully, though.
I know on an intellectual level that I will die, perhaps soon, but the reality is I feel invincible. I wonder how many times in my past I potentially could have die if things had been just slightly different. I reckon several.
My friend Dave told me that he drunkenly stepped on the live rail when walking on the mainline tracks. He said that he could feel the rail sucking his foot onto it, but he was able to pull it off. I don't know what to make of this story, he reckons he was lucky because he wasn't standing on the other rail, so his rubber shoes and the dry ground meant that he wasn't electrically grounded. Being electrically grounded would have killed him.
I'm rambling now, thoughts of death do that to me.
I double-checked there was no lightbulb in our spare bathroom when we moved in
by sticking my fingers into it.
Dunno if that would've killed me, but it was incredibly stupid.
Shit man, Keith Relf of the Yardbirds was killed by his guitar at home
you just never fucking know.
Bit harsh.
I thought he was alright.
couldn't you just see that there wasn't a lightbulb there?
Yes.
I just thought I'd check, in case it had been broken off or something. Then I could have cut my fingers on the shards as well as getting an electric shock!
There was one of those 'It happened to me stories' in the Guardian Weekend Mag recently,
where a guy (think he was a semi-famous indie musician actually) described how his wife died in the most horrendously innocuous circumstance - they had some shonky wiring in their house, and a metal cutlery rack on the wall of their kitchen for spatulas and things. Occasionally they had noticed shocks and things when then touched it but laughed it off - then one day his wife went to grab a slotted spoon or whatever and for some reason it all connected and electrocuted her.
I find stories like this far more scary than any sort of serial killer tale.
Different kettle of fish, perhaps, but...
years ago one of the British tabloids printed a full front page photo of a dead baby lying in the street outside of an abortion clinic in China. Everyone else was just going about their day as usual.
I can see why these things, or at least that one, are printed, and i guess it's a bit different to the moral question of whether someone should step in to actually save a life rather than photography it, assuming they or other people can't do both, but it stuck with me anyway.
The Guardian is a big fan of snuff pics
Not so long ago some luge guy crashed and died. They decided to publish four photos so you could see the crash step by step. Which I thought was about as low as it gets.
i remember there being gory photos on the cover when saddam hussein's sons died
Pictures in the paper are getting more and more morbid these days
This is horrific though. His family must be devastated anyway let alone with this being on the front page. I'd hate to see a picture of my fathers last moments alive where he is scared and helpless. The guy should have deleted the images straight away if he was just using the flash to stop the driver.
The dailymail website is just full of CCTV footage these days of peoples last moments alive. Today's was horrible where they had a 15 month old girl being given mouth to mouth whilst running through the hospital corridors by her mothers boyfriend who was the one who beat her up so badly that she was on deaths door anyway.
Actually the hardest thing for me to read on it
Was the story with his wife because they'd had a fight in the morning before he left so he started drinking and that's how they left things :(
I remember an incident as a child
where, whilst on holiday in Turkey, my dad bought a Turkish paper. There'd been a bomb somewhere and the front page was a picture of the scene afterwards - and i remember vividly this image of a big piece of meat, looking like something from an abattoir, just draped over a set of railings, ribs poking out. Really stayed with me
Summary: Turks are barbarians
Interesting/not interesting
Everyone's talked about the photographer, no one's mention the dude who just threw him in front of a train
well that guy was just having a bit of shabs n bants
it's the photographer who is a proper bastard
It's safe for work, not gory or anything - but quite shocking/upsetting:
so, yes then?