It's fitting that an art critic should weigh in on this picture, because the man is not so much "holding onto" the rod as he is not quite resting his fingers on it in a hard-to-maintain gesture (try it yourself with a broom) that looks an awfully lot like a pose. Indeed, with his neck and left leg stretched and his left hand and right leg tensed, his figure is virtually a parody of contrapposto , the ancient technique by which sculptors balance stretched and flexed extremities to heighten visual interest.

If we want to know how he got that way, it so happens that we can turn to a video of this incident that covers the time interval in which the photo was taken. It shows that at first the chair was either empty or that the man was lying on his right side; the resolution is too poor to decide which. It's good enough, though, to show that his upper body isn't visible. Then there is a significant gap of two minutes and 43 seconds. When the video picks up again, he's already seated as we see him in the photo. The rescue worker flutters over him for the next 26 seconds. The resolution of this segment is again too low to reveal what we'd like to know: the exact position of his left arm and hand. Then there is another gap of 54 seconds and...presto!... the man is in a stretcher being lowered to ground level. It's possible that the photo was snapped during that interval. The reason is that an uncropped version at the photographer's own Web site shows a man in a red shirt behind the rescue worker who may be the same one who is seen climbing up to the area immediately before the gap. (That version, which has more subtle tonal values, also shows that, yes, the victims's ear and the hairline behind it really are rather peculiar.)

The photo is ambiguous about the condition of the victim. And the video, alas, is missing exactly the parts of the story that would have resolved it.

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