Many years ago I began noticing that newspaper photos credited
to Agence France-Presse often had a certain je ne sais quoi
not present in other wire service pictures. In a typical case,
there would be some feature that would distract from the
putative subject (as defined by the caption), such that I
wondered if the image was staged or even faked, perhaps for
the purpose of conveying a steganographic message to some
knowledgable elite. Up until the early '90s there was always
the question of whether the weirdness could be an illusion
created by the low resolution of newspaper images.
But newspaper pictures have since become dramatically sharper...
and l'Agence is still up to its stunts. In this image
the piece of timber (detail below)
seems to be defying the force of gravity...or maybe just
giving the finger to the laws of probability. Is it attached
to the cross-member or just floating in front of it? Impaled
on the wall by some means we can't see? And if impaled, by
what force? Explosion? Photojournalist with a hammer? Mysteries
abound.
NY Times, Oct. 27, 2001
Charles Packer
mailbox@cpacker.org