Reacting To Photos On The Web

My friend W. passed along a PowerPoint presentation that is going hand-to-hand, via E-Mail.

The PowerPoint presentation shows sixteen famous photos generally showing people in great distress. The sentiment is humanitarian: if you believe "other people from different countries could be your brothers" you are asked to pass it on.

The political context aggravated my friend W. For example, the Sudanese photo:

Photo by Kevin Carter. The PowerPoint presentation states:

The destitution shown in the photograph is the direct result of the continuous meddling of Western foreign powers in Sudan in order to grab its riches. As a result of this and the inefficiency and corruption of the local government, Sudanese die of starvation in a country considered to be the richest in Africa in terms of agriculture.

My friend W. states:

Blaming starvation in Sudan on "meddling of western powers" is a bunch of BS. That country has been in civil war since before I was born. Their problems are self-inflicted.

My reaction was:

Regarding Africa in general (and Sudan, in particular) a lot of problems can be attributed to the placement of boundaries by the original colonial powers, who often followed divide-and-conquer strategies that made no sense except to deliberately cause conflict. A rational person would sit down and draw boundaries where they made sense (based on geography, language, history, etc.), so that separate peoples would have easily-governable units. Unfortunately, that won’t happen these days without ugly wars. The news this week that, based on the results of a referendum, Sudan will split into two halves (north and south) is the best thing that has happened there in generations!

The final picture in the PowerPoint presentation sure seems ominous enough:

The PowerPoint presentation states:

This photo was taken on the coast of Sumatra Island in Indonesia during an overwhelming tsunami, with waves measuring up to 20 meters in height. The picture was found a month and a half later in a digital camera. Whoever took this picture, no doubt, ceased to exist a few seconds after pressing the trigger of the small machine.

My friend W. stated:

I'm not certain, but I am wondering if the tsunami photo is a fake. The story about the camera found weeks later sounds like classic urban legend. And, that neighborhood of ranch houses looks a lot like the US to me.

My reaction was:

The final picture isn’t a tsunami at all, but a dust storm. The characteristic shape of the approaching dust storm (generated by a thunderstorm downdraft that is spreading out along the ground) is called a “haboob”. The exact location isn’t clear (it could be California), but based on the eucalyptus forest in the background, I’d say it’s probably Australia. Probably near Broken Hill, New South Wales, or somewhere down there. Australians really like ranch-style housing!

And sure enough, the photo comes from Griffith, New South Wales, Australia, in 2002. They get plenty-good haboobs down there!

What kills me, though, is that whoever prepared the photo for the PowerPoint presentation deliberately obscured the date in the corner (since there was no tsunami on that date). Deliberate deception!

One trouble, of course, is that people have a kind of ant's-eye view of most dust storms. They just look like big formless masses to them.

But for those of us lucky enough to have grown up in deserts, and with an eye to weather, the characteristic shape of the haboob is a common-enough sight. I remember once standing on top of Mt. Graham in southeastern Arizona and watching several haboobs heading off in different directions on the valley floors nearly a mile below us, until sunset and deteriorating weather killed the spectacle. An amazing sight! But a sight of a sort that many people don't see. People rarely see tsunamis either. Thus, people easily confuse pictures of the two things.

My friend W. had comments on several other of the photos, but then began wondering:

Now I am beginning to wonder about the picture of the Spanish beachgoers near the dead guy.

Photo by Javier Bauluz. The PowerPoint presentation states:

[S]hows two Spanish tourists looking at the lifeless body of a clandestine boat immigrant.

My reaction was:

I very vaguely remember that photo. Somehow it bothered me the least of the photos. We don't know the story behind it, and there may be dozens of innocuous explanations for the apparent indifference. There are other tales in the world of real indifference - the recent events at Christmas Island, for example - that have left no iconic photos, partly because the people at the scene were too busy trying to save lives to bother taking photos.

And by indifference, I mean global indifference, of the sort that can start the 2003 Iraq War, for example, without realizing the direct consequences that would eventually unfurl at Christmas Island. The people on Christmas Island were not indifferent: they did everything they could to help.

Humanitarianism, and a desire to help, often clash with the real world, where it can just prolong agony. It's all part of the human tragedy called life.

I remember once being in a commuter bus traveling south on I-17, heading from Flagstaff to Phoenix, Arizona, in 1989, when a car travelling in the same direction as us began weaving and went off the road and plunged down an embankment. The commuter bus stopped and we all piled out to help.

The car had flipped over and come down on its roof, smashing in the roof and pinning the head of the woman driver hard against her left shoulder. It clearly was important to lift the car to give her relief until help arrived, but how?

I realized that one could use a lever against the gas tank inlet of the flipped car and lift the car slightly, giving the poor woman some relief from her agony. But the gas tank inlet was not designed for that purpose, and the lever kept slipping. The harder we all tried to lift the car using the lever, the more the car slipped and rocked, and ground her head against her shoulder. And emergency response was delayed too (the location was on a divided highway segment that was far from cities or towns), so we had lots of time to practice, and get it wrong.

Humanitarianism can hurt.

Anyway, like the folks at Snopes.com say, resist accepting anything you see or read on the Internet, or on TV, or in the press, without first attempting to establish the context, and getting independent confirmation.

Then, get mad!