This morning when I logged onto the ninemsn home page I was confronted with the most extraordinary piece of photo journalism I have seen in a long time. The picture was taken at the Notting Hill carnival in London only hours before and shows a young man standing in the middle of the street, arms outstretched as blood pours from the fresh stab wound on the side of his torso. His attacker is running away from him while police look on with obvious shock and confusion. In the foreground of the picture is a middle-aged man sticking out his leg in a bid to trip-up the running man. Despite its graphic nature and intolerable violence, I could not stop looking at it.
Of course we have all seen violent and graphic action shots like this before. Photo Journalists in war zones or at the scene of major disasters often capture pictures that tell the story much better than the accompanying copy; however, something about this particular photo had a particularly strong effect on me. Nothing about it was predetermined. If a photographer arrives at the scene of an accident or is working in a war zone, they are somewhat prepared. They know a little about the kinds of things they will be photographing and the angles and lighting they need to deliver the goods; they are looking for the hero shot to make it to the front page. The photo taken in Notting Hill was the complete opposite of this. It is clear that someone has picked up their camera and clicked the button just in time and at the perfect moment. A second later and the attacker would have run past them and been out of the shot; the man with his leg out would have backed away and the police would have surrounded the victim, hiding him from vision.
For some unknown reason, no other news website was running this picture (ok maybe ninemsn had the rights to it) or a story about the stabbing. I spent about 20 minutes flicking between abc.net.au, news.com and channel 7 news but to no avail. I don’t usually praise ninemsn or talk up their reporting capabilities (considering most of the stuff on their site is gossip and hype) but I will give credit where credit is due: good job ninemsn.
Here is the link to the story
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