Now and Then: 35 Years after June 8, 1972
There’s so much going on at school (final weeks for exams) and work that I didn’t have time to write much - anything - for this blog. You surely noticed. But today I’ve stumbled upon a story which is worth being told, and which is a sad reflection on media and society.
June 8, 1972
Photo: Nick Ut/AP
On June 8, 1972, during the Vietnam War, Nick Ut made a photograph showing terrified children running away from a napalm attack on their home village. Nick Ut later won the Pulitzer prize for his photo, which was shown all over the world as one of the many images depicting the full horror of war. The background events to the photo are explained in the read worthy article The Bigger Picture.
June 8, 2007
Photo: Nick Ut/AP
35 years later, the same photographer makes another photo which goes around the world. It shows a crying Paris Hilton who got sent back to jail to serve the 45-day sentence she was convicted to for violating the terms of an existing probation.
I leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.
(Found via Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish)
Update 14 June 2007
Well, this entry seems to drive many visitors to my blog. As I didn’t find out the connection between these two photographs on my own, I again want to credit my source, Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish. That done, there were two reasons I started to write this amendment:
First, I’ve updated the original post to better credit the photographer.
Second, the truth of the above post got questioned. Which is fair enough, so I’d like to address these doubts: The date and authorship of the first picture can be verified through the already quoted article, The Bigger Picture, the wikipedia article on Kim Phuc (the naked girl in the centre of the image), or via a google search for “june 8 1972″ + vietnam, which leads to multiple corresponding references. The date and authorship of the second photograph can be verified directly at the website of the Associated Press. In addition, articles on wikipedia as well as other news sources (N.Y. Daily News or the German Netzeitung) confirm the above information.
