On Gaza: All I've got is a photograph
by Diane V. McLoughlin - December 3, 2008
The electing of President Barack Obama may be the last, best hope of avoiding the
equivalent of Armageddon.
I do not doubt that Obama was a hopeful choice not so much because voters knew with
certainty that he would change things. Rather, he got the votes because it is
imperative that things change. Voters only hope that he (or anybody not Bush) will do
it.
It affords us a little breathing room - opportunity - an opening. That is all. If we do not
recognize and seize it, obviously, it can be as easily lost. Depending on the stakes in a
given situation we can find that the cost of lost opportunity is beyond our wildest
imaginings. I fear this rule may now hold true in global proportions.
This is by way of expressing my feeling of the urgency of the times.
The simple juxtaposition of two very different photographs and in what places
they were positioned in a recent edition of the New York Times gives one pause.
On the top of the front page was a joyous scene. Two newly-married gay women
celebrating on the front steps of New Haven City Hall. One would have to be made of
wood not to feel lighter in mood looking at the picture. There are human implications in
respect for human rights and individual liberty. And, we can tell there is about to be one
hell of a party.
Working my way down through the choices in the headlines, I click on, '4 dead in Israel
battle on Gaza border'.
And what comes before our eyes is a very different photograph.
The photograph accompanying the article, by Khalil Hamra of the Associated Press, is
a monumental masterpiece of composition, of form, and in the reduction of the political
to the intimately personal.
We recognize a degree of pain and suffering in this captured moment which
I would argue although we know it, from time immemorial such pain has been beyond
anyone's ability to adequately express in words.
We find frozen in time the love and deep compassion of men who reach out, whose
strong arms would physically take away the pain if only they could hold the one
suffering tightly enough.
We know at least something of this pain; the pain of knowing we cannot take away the
loss or injustice for others no matter how fervently we wish that we could.
The loss we witness in this photograph is untimely. It is unnecessary. A young man is
in the flower of his manhood, yet he is dead.
Stilled, forever, his face is beautiful. We do not know him but he could as easily be one
of our own.
In gazing at this extraordinary scene I could not help but ask myself, why this editorial
choice? Although I can only imagine the happy chaos that must be the
running of the day-to-day of such a large and diverse news organization as The New
York Times, with so many extraordinarily talented individuals across disciplines and
many departments - yet - 'how could they'? - is what I wondered, to myself.
Because it is no use giving top of place to that which is well on the road to
fairness - the rights of gays - while it is less than useful to deny readers the rare
opportunity to gaze upon the truth at the epicenter of the problem of the Middle East; a
glimpse, of the absolute extremity of it - top of place, on the front page.
To see it is to be moved to new understanding.
I curse those who have dragged us to a place where to breath the word 'peace' is akin
to something loathsome and weak. In the vernacular of my Brooklyn-born brilliant Dad, I
think to myself, fuck'm. I hesitate to write it but it's what I think of anyone so stupid as to
feel this way about wanting peace.
It is not weak to want peace.
Killing is all too easy. The consequences of seeing human life stilled forever?
Families, communities, whole countries destroyed? Veterans who come home broken?
My father could have told us, as we experience for ourselves looking at this photograph
taken in Gaza - that to look upon the consequences of conflict is not just hard. It is the
worst. He was a tough character who grew up in a tough neighborhood, in tough times.
But war? At core he never got over it.
To ever want to stop it? What I would say to editors of large, mainstream publications
like the New York Times, is that even if all we've got is a photograph, it can't but help,
for us to see.
home
by Diane V. McLoughlin - December 3, 2008
The electing of President Barack Obama may be the last, best hope of avoiding the
equivalent of Armageddon.
I do not doubt that Obama was a hopeful choice not so much because voters knew with
certainty that he would change things. Rather, he got the votes because it is
imperative that things change. Voters only hope that he (or anybody not Bush) will do
it.
It affords us a little breathing room - opportunity - an opening. That is all. If we do not
recognize and seize it, obviously, it can be as easily lost. Depending on the stakes in a
given situation we can find that the cost of lost opportunity is beyond our wildest
imaginings. I fear this rule may now hold true in global proportions.
This is by way of expressing my feeling of the urgency of the times.
The simple juxtaposition of two very different photographs and in what places
they were positioned in a recent edition of the New York Times gives one pause.
On the top of the front page was a joyous scene. Two newly-married gay women
celebrating on the front steps of New Haven City Hall. One would have to be made of
wood not to feel lighter in mood looking at the picture. There are human implications in
respect for human rights and individual liberty. And, we can tell there is about to be one
hell of a party.
Working my way down through the choices in the headlines, I click on, '4 dead in Israel
battle on Gaza border'.
And what comes before our eyes is a very different photograph.
The photograph accompanying the article, by Khalil Hamra of the Associated Press, is
a monumental masterpiece of composition, of form, and in the reduction of the political
to the intimately personal.
We recognize a degree of pain and suffering in this captured moment which
I would argue although we know it, from time immemorial such pain has been beyond
anyone's ability to adequately express in words.
We find frozen in time the love and deep compassion of men who reach out, whose
strong arms would physically take away the pain if only they could hold the one
suffering tightly enough.
We know at least something of this pain; the pain of knowing we cannot take away the
loss or injustice for others no matter how fervently we wish that we could.
The loss we witness in this photograph is untimely. It is unnecessary. A young man is
in the flower of his manhood, yet he is dead.
Stilled, forever, his face is beautiful. We do not know him but he could as easily be one
of our own.
In gazing at this extraordinary scene I could not help but ask myself, why this editorial
choice? Although I can only imagine the happy chaos that must be the
running of the day-to-day of such a large and diverse news organization as The New
York Times, with so many extraordinarily talented individuals across disciplines and
many departments - yet - 'how could they'? - is what I wondered, to myself.
Because it is no use giving top of place to that which is well on the road to
fairness - the rights of gays - while it is less than useful to deny readers the rare
opportunity to gaze upon the truth at the epicenter of the problem of the Middle East; a
glimpse, of the absolute extremity of it - top of place, on the front page.
To see it is to be moved to new understanding.
I curse those who have dragged us to a place where to breath the word 'peace' is akin
to something loathsome and weak. In the vernacular of my Brooklyn-born brilliant Dad, I
think to myself, fuck'm. I hesitate to write it but it's what I think of anyone so stupid as to
feel this way about wanting peace.
It is not weak to want peace.
Killing is all too easy. The consequences of seeing human life stilled forever?
Families, communities, whole countries destroyed? Veterans who come home broken?
My father could have told us, as we experience for ourselves looking at this photograph
taken in Gaza - that to look upon the consequences of conflict is not just hard. It is the
worst. He was a tough character who grew up in a tough neighborhood, in tough times.
But war? At core he never got over it.
To ever want to stop it? What I would say to editors of large, mainstream publications
like the New York Times, is that even if all we've got is a photograph, it can't but help,
for us to see.
home
Gaza
Photographer Khalil Hamra. Associated Press. 11/08.
Photographer Khalil Hamra. Associated Press. 11/08.
