Tom Simpson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> John Coyle wrote:
> > What would you have done?
> > Yesterday, a young man died in the small park opposite where I live. The
> > street was full of police and their vehicles, for about 5 hours all told.
> > Despite the fact that I could see all this action, and from our roof could
> > see the body and the various examinations taking place, I did not shoot a
> > single photograph.
> As an individual, amateur photographer, I might have looked for
> interesting shots relating to the response to the call, but would not
> have shot the body itself. That is just more than a little morbid for
> me, and kinda' disrespectful of both the deceased and his/her family.
>
> If I were a news photographer, that would depend on the editorial policy
> of who I was shooting for. [...]
That's pretty much what I was going to say, except that I hadn't
gotten as far as thinking about what I'd do if I were employed as
a news photographer.
I'd shoot the overall scene, shots of police collecting evidence
other than right next to the body, etc., but while the thought
most certainly would have occurred to me, I don't think I would
have photographed the body of the victim himself. That can be
adequately recorded by some police photographer.
I can envision making a different decision depending on circumsttances,
if for some reason I thought it was Very Important to tell the story
that images of the body would be needed to tell, but I'm not really
sure what those circumstances would have to be -- I need to think about
it more. I just know that I'd feel ... goulish ... photographing a
body in a situation that seemed sensationalist or exploitative or,
well I'm having trouble putting my finger on exactly what it is that
would seem to make it feel wrong.
I'm not sure I can suport this position logically; just that it would
feel like I was being creepy.
In my neighbourhood, I've had the chance to photograph a lot of fires,
a fair number of automobile crashes, a few arrests, and one person
lying in the gutter for unknown reasons and whose fate I do not know.
(I called 911 _first_; my second act would have been to throw on
clothes and go down to see if there were anything to do while waiting
for the ambulance, but others appeared on the sidewalk before I'd
finished talking to the emergency dispatcher and seemed to by trying
to provide assistance in the couple of minutes it took for an ambulance
to arrive.) I've also photographed a burglary in progress (while
berating the 911 operator for the lack of police response -- the cops
did show up _twelve-[expletive]ing_HOURS_later_ despite there being
an "enhanced enforcement zone" (lots of cops positioned ready to go,
and surveillance cameras) a mere four or five blocks away!).
I've ordinarily got no compunction photographing wrecked cars being
hauled away -- including one cut in half by a tree and hauled away
on two different rollbacks -- but I also nearly never hear how the
occupants fared. The time I spent a while photographing an SUV and
a police car smooshed together so firmly that it took two large
tow trucks pulling in opposite directions nad laying rubber to pry
them apart -- quite a dramatic image -- I felt terrible when I found
out later that an officer had still been in the (stopped) police car
when the SUV had rammed it. Rational or not, my feeling changed from
"what a dramatic tangle of metal", to feeling like I'd done something
wrong by starting to shoot before finding out how the officer was
doing, and I waited around to hear. (He died at the hospital; the
driver of the stolen SUV survived.) I don't recall whether I ever
got around to having that film developed; this happened years ago.
When I had started shooting, the idea that the driver of the SUV
could have deliberately rammed an _occupied_ vehicle was so alien
to me, that I could only imagine that the officer had bailed after
putting his car in position. (The thought still _is_ that alien to
me even though I know better.)
The question of when it's "tsk, tsk, how awful, but I might as
well not let these sights go to waste," and when it's "I'll
feel like a ghoul after I stop concentrating on the viewfinder,"
is sometimes an easy one and sometimes uneasy. When I'm having
trouble figuring out the answer to that, it probably means that
I should back off and let the images go unrecorded. If I were
shooting for news media, I'd probably have to wade deeper into
those less-certain cases.
-- Glenn
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