Picture Perfect

585 Words2 Pages

What is up without down? What is left without right? What is on without off? What is death without life? Nothing to be exactly, but for a fact, we can't have one without the other. We know this to be true and we will never be able to prove it wrong, but yet we seem to ignore the facts starring us right in the eyes when they are going on. Death is an uneasy topic. What is it really? We know it is unavoidable, so why do we ignore it and act so silly? If death is printed on paper we go into a rally a protest, yet this is the same society who will pay $8.90 to see a horror movie accepts the sighting, sounds, and vivid image of a gruesome death? Yea okay. If this is acceptable then so is print! While reading The Boston Photographs by Nora Ephron, I really started to take to her way of thinking, and she thinks that newspapers should publish more photos of death. Well I completely agree.
Nora's first reason states, "Beyond that, the pictures are classics, old-fashioned but perfect examples of photojournalism" (173) 1. The very definition of photojournalism is, “journalism in which written copy is subordinate to pictorial usually photographic presentation of news stories or in which a high proportion of pictorial presentation is used" 2. By definition this is in fact a perfect example of photojournalism. Among the three photographs you see a story of a brave firefighter attempting to rescue a mother and her child, but ending with a grim, unfortunate death. These images are powerful to say the least due to the fact that this is the art of death right before the masterpiece. As Nora expresses, “These are pictures of death in action, of that split second when luck runs out and it is impossible to look at them without feeling their extraordin...

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...van, and Hugo Adam. Bedau. "The Boston Photographs." Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 173. Print

"Photojournalism." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2014. .

Barnet, Sylvan, and Hugo Adam. Bedau. "The Boston Photographs." Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 173. Print

Barnet, Sylvan, and Hugo Adam. Bedau. "The Boston Photographs." Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 174. Print

Barnet, Sylvan, and Hugo Adam. Bedau. "The Boston Photographs." Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. 175. Print

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