Why This Is the Iconic Gulf Oil Spill Picture

[Robbien]

(June 4) -- A man helplessly tries to stop a convoy of tanks with his body. Three firefighters raise an American flag in the rubble of the World Trade Center. A turtle-necked hippie places a carnation in the barrel of a rifle during a Vietnam War protest.

You can never predict when a single photograph will transcend that day's front page and become an icon of an era. You just know it when it does. And in the case of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, that picture arrived Thursday.

A sea bird encased in oil, looking more like some mutated prehistoric creature, struggles along the shore of East Grand Terre Island in Louisiana.



Taken by Associated Press photographer Charlie Riedel, the arresting image was packaged as part of a photo gallery of affected wildlife along the Gulf Coast. All the photographs are heartbreaking: A tiny bird lies on its back, its legs up in the air as if rigor mortis had set in prematurely; a brown pelican, the state bird of Louisiana, flails, open-billed, in the murky water.

But there's something about Riedel's first picture, the creature-from-the-deep image, that clearly makes it the anointed one that everyone is talking about and the one that everyone will remember for decades to come.

Why? Well, for most people, the answer lies in a question. What is it? Is it duck? A sea bird? There's so much oil on this animal that you're hard-pressed to tell where the wing actually begins or where the beak ends. As Charles Ledford, a commercial photographer in Richmond, Va., told me, "It's a riddle of sorts. It asks the question, 'What can this be?' rather than telling us immediately, this is an oil-soaked pelican."

That's it exactly. (For the record, I don't actually think this is a pelican, but who can say?) There's something positively mutant about this bird, as if its body had become a host for some alien life form Jules Verne could never have imagined. Australian platypus by way of Chernobyl.

Robert Longhitano, a photographer in Philadelphia, agrees. "As soon as the lead photo popped up on my screen, it shook me to the core. I literally had to fight back the tears. It's truly an iconic image. In my mind, it's as if this spill took something beautiful and turned it into a monster."


http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-why-oil-soaked-bird-photo-is-the-iconic-gulf-oil-spill-image/19503566

[CountAllVotes]

1. the picture of the poor oiled bird (likely now dead)

will be the reason that BP will go down along with the rest of their cronies. It will follow them all forever.

If it takes a dying bird to do it, it has not died in vain.

It seems to have caused people to wake up to this reality. Sad that this is what it has taken to awaken Joe Public.

:kick: & recommend.

[newtothegame]

3. The public's been awake and demanding something be done for a month now.

We're just waiting for our government to actually respond. Where have you been?

[CountAllVotes]

4. many people are stupidly unaware

you'd be surprised. I've mentioned this to some people and they could have cared less. Maybe that is because it isn't in their backyard yet. :shrug: :(

[newtothegame]

5. Fair enough!

:hi:

[CountAllVotes]

6. hi back

:hi:

I couldn't believe the stupidity I ran up against just last week.

I was at the local grocery store and this woman that works there is very overweight. She had told me about a book, "The Worst Hard Time" and told me that she was descended from people from this region that lived there during the Dust Bowl years. Being many people that lived there at that time were starving to death, this explains to her why she is overweight - she has the "fat gene".

I told her I'd read this book and she continued to go on with how it was these awful horrid years that were the reason for her being overweight and that hopefully something like this would never happen again.

I then said to her, "What about the huge spill in the gulf? Do you not think you will be affected by it?"

She replied, "Oh yeah, that spill ... almost forgot about that." So yes, she knew but was placing her own agenda before that of the gulf IMO.

Plain idiocy and stupidity combined no doubt! :(

:kick:

[Lorien]

14. That's turning into a hellishly long wait

how many more animals must die before we see a little ACTION from our government that doesn't revolve around covering BP's ass?

[SocialistLez]

2. Literal chills went through my body. NT

[davikim]

7. saw this at work

and I was literally sobbing, I have to work at putting it out of my head.

[Uncle Joe]

8. I believe this image also projects the innate fear of being buried alive like no other pic.

I believe this is particularly potent because nothing signifies freedom more than birds.

Thanks for the thread, Robbien.

[Tutankhamun]

10. I think you nailed it. The innate fear of being buried alive

[ShamelessHussy]

9. OMG - what have we done!

:'(

[amborin]

11. this image is iconic b/c it's what we humans have done to helpless wildlife; we're monsters

[nashville_brook]

12. ...

[Waiting For Everyman]

13. Yes.

All the images like this are horrible, but this one stood out among them to me too.

[lib_wit_it]

15. This image needs to be posted on all the walls on facebook. Many are still ignoring.

[sce56]

16. And I have yet to see any pictures of the mamals dying from this Geyser in the M$M

RIP Flipper