"Putting a Face on the Gulf Oil Leak"
"Putting a Face on the Gulf Oil Leak"By David W. Dunlap
"The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico finally has a face. Or, rather, faces — at once primordially familiar and yet utterly strange under their new bronze patinas. As close-up photographs begin to appear that document the insult and injury done to coastal wildlife by the Deepwater Horizon leak, public pressure on the Obama administration and BP to stop the leak — stoked by an emotional response to such troubling images — will surely grow. These are the faces that government officials and oil executives may see in their nightmares.
“The pelican is the state bird,” said Andy Levin, a photographer who lives in New Orleans and edits the Web photography journal 100Eyes. “That image pretty much sums it up, the one Charlie Riedel took yesterday.” Mr. Riedel, 48, has been an Associated Press photographer for 10 years. He is based in Kansas City but is now on assignment in the Gulf. He photographed the pelicans and other oil-covered waterfowl while accompanying Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana on a tour of East Grand Terre Island on Thursday. The Big Picture on Boston.com posted them (“Caught in the Oil“) and drew more than 1,500 comments. On Friday, Getty Images transmitted another extraordinary series of wildlife portraits, these by Win McNamee. “They’re definitely everlasting at this point,” said Denis Paquin, the deputy director of photography at The Associated Press. “That is the power of still photos. This is the start of it, in a sense. They have become that iconic yet horrible vision of what people had expected to see.”
Strong words, but not much of a stretch. Think of it: if you were to close your eyes and try to bring one image to mind from the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska, it would probably be a single animal — not any wide-angle, comprehensive panorama. “You will remember a bird completely covered in oil,” Mr. Paquin said. “In the eyes, you can see there’s something wrong. And you can study it. The eyes always tell a story.” It is important, too, that most of the birds pictured by Mr. Riedel and Mr. McNamee were alive. To the extent that anthropomorphic empathy kicks in, it comes much more easily looking at an individual, sentient creature and wondering, “What would that even feel like?”
These new photographs are fundamentally different from those that have, so far, dominated news coverage: talking heads at lecterns; orchestrated beach visits; aerial views that attempt to convey the extent of the leak but manage, in an awful way, to be captivating in their beauty; or underwater photos that are almost as fascinating as they are horrifying. The pictures by Mr. Riedel and Mr. McNamee are not the first taken of distressed wildlife since the leak began on April 20. But it may be safe to say they’re the most extensive and intimate. The images of creatures with clots and clumps of oil on their feathers “would bring most people to tears, whether they like seabirds or not,” Mr. Paquin said.
Mr. Levin has been struggling — as every photojournalist has — with restricted access and sanitized scenes on the Gulf coast. Speaking of Mr. Riedel’s work, he said: “I would love to have taken it. I’m sad that it had to be taken. But I’m glad it got taken.” For the record, Mr. Paquin added, “I’m told that the birds that were still alive — mostly pelicans and up to 40 of them — were taken to a bird cleaning facility in Ft. Jackson and are being cared for.”
0 Response to ""Putting a Face on the Gulf Oil Leak""
Post a Comment