Photography and Kairos

Continuing with the recent trend of discussing the fallacies of photography, as well as pictures with guns in them:
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin holding assault rifle

This photograph of New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin with an assault weapon has been stirring some controversy in his hometown. (Click here, here, here, or here for more coverage. I first spotted this story at Wonkette.)

The controversy surrounds the fact that the mayor appears to be aiming the gun at the Chief of Police.
Mayor Nagin was not happy:

"The photo selected to depict the public safety press conference on yesterday by the Times Picayune grossly misrepresented the Mayor of the City of New Orleans, the Superintendent of Police and the men and women of the police department.... [A] photo, taken out of context, was selected by our own local media and now showcased across the nation as a mockery of all this city's recovery efforts. This is the real tragedy.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune issued the following clarification:

A photo in some Metro sections and on Nola.com on Wednesday showed a laughing Mayor Ray Nagin pointing an M-4 rifle at Chief of Police Warren Riley at a news conference to announce new crime fighting equipment purchased by the New Orleans Police Department. A review of a video taken at the event shows that the mayor momentarily pointed the gun at the chief as he was lowering it but he did not deliberately point it at Riley.

If you're looking to teach the subjective nature of photography, this seems like a textbook example for class discussion.

While I completely understand the mayor's argument, the awful events in Illinois yesterday will obviously be generating a lot of discussion about gun control/access issues in the U.S. So probably will the fact that the NBA All-Star game is about to be held in New Orleans. Bad kairos, I guess.

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2-D images

The image above made me think of this famous image:

Elian Gonzales being taken from closet

which also caused a lot of controversy because the two-dimensional image made it seem that a gun was pointed somewhere where it might not have actually been pointed (that was an awkward sentence).

Of course Nagin looks happier than anyone in this photo.

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