I’m not sure how much Time spent sending contract photographer Peter Hapak across the globe to shoot photos for a gallery to accompany the magazine’s “Person of the Year” cover story naming protestors as the most important person of the year.
If Hapak’s estimation is correct, he traveled 25,000 miles to shoot what became an online gallery of 36 photos from Tunisia to Oakland to Wall Street to Mexico to a blinded dentist in Cairo.
At a dollar a mile, probably a conservative estimate, Time spent $25,000 to create a gallery of agony that includes the mother of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi whose suicide almost a year ago began protests that toppled the Tunisia government and marked the beginning of Arab Spring throughout the Mideast.
The gallery conveys the variety and stark intensity of the 2011 protest movement, the strongest since the anti-Vietnam war rallies in the late 60 and early 70s.
Then, it what has to be strictly an attempt to sell the story by its cover instead of its content, Time hires Shepard Fairey to create its cover from a photograph of a protester at the Occupy LA rally. Shepard, sued by the AP for stealing a photo of Barack Obama as the source for his infamous HOPE poster, did it for time with a photo by LA photographer Ted Soqui.
The argument will rail for the next few days about fair use, appropriation, talent and lack of talent, appropriateness, out of focus, copyrights, and money.
What’s lost in this is time’s mistake in refusing to recognize Mohamed Bouazizi as the person of the year. His act of self immolation in protest of an authoritarian regime began a series of protests that toppled governments forcing dictators to hide or die.
His death propelled hidden and suppressed anger to express itself in streets, town centers, alleys and roads leading to the palaces of rulers. That anger has changed the world. Mohamed Bouazizi started it.
Time’s cover should have been Hapak’s photo of his mother holding the poster with his photo that fomented that anger, and that change. That’s a real face of protest, not an artist’s rendering of a protester hidden behind a kerchief.
Related articles
- Time’s Person of the Year: ‘The Protester’ (politico.com)
- Occupy L.A.: Protester is the face of Time’s ‘Person of the Year’ (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
