Friday, December 03, 2004
np: the replacements - "unsatisfied"
today marks a rather horrible anniversary in our modern world.
it was twenty years ago today that a pesticide factory owned and operated by union carbide suffered a massive industrial accident leaking tons of methyl isocyanate gas into the town of bhopal, india, and killing 15,000 people. this morning on NPR, i heard a commentary by a reporter who was himself a child in india at the time of the disaster. he spoke of one photograph in particular that, for him, summed up the horror and tragedy of the accident. you can see the photograph here. (warning: not for sensitive audiences.) it is the first photograph and a different photograph of the same person is fifth from the top.
i wasn't quite prepared for the image. it had been described by the reporter as the "funeral of an unknown girl." her face is locked in what might have been a last attempt to breathe amidst the toxic fumes pervading her town. her eyes are blacked over in an opaque pall. it is not a pleasant photo.
it is that one, breathtakingly horrible photo that always brings things home for us. we can always shake loose our thoughts without the visual evidence. until we see photos of bodies from gas leaks, of vietnamese children being burned by napalm, of people jumping out of the world trade center before its collapse, or even of the tortured iraqi prisoners at abu ghraib, sometimes we are able to put these things in a comfortable part of our mind that recognizes tragedy, empathizes with it, but fails to fully comprehend it.
why else would the government fight so hard against releasing most of the photos from abu ghraib? against photos of flag-draped soldier coffins making their final journey home to their families from iraq?
pictures really are worth a thousand words. and sometimes worth more than anything you could ever actually say.
