Some of these images are very graphic and caution is advised
Out of Africa
February 9th, 2008, filed by David Viggers
I’ve been trying to write about some sport images that caught my eye while trawling through the Reuters file but I keep getting hung up on our pictures from Kenya.
They are so raw, so powerful and uncompromising that even the most accomplished images of cossetted sportsmen performing in completely controlled circumstances seem insignificant in comparison.
George Philipas
What they portray is just hellish - a pile of charred bodies in a church, a young mother lying dead in her home while her distressed toddler wails unattended, a bright-eyed teenage boy with the shaft of an arrow sticking out of his head.
People, dirt poor inflicting unimaginable cruelty and suffering on other equally poor people, the motivation for it really doesn’t matter, it is an appalling human tragedy.
Peter Andrews
When I was a kid I remember a truly shocking Oxfam poster with an image of a starving Biafran child, huge wide eyes, tormented by flies, stick thin and with an impossibly distended belly.
In the intervening period the image of a shocked, wide-eyed innocent has become an overused cypher for suffering in every subsequent African disaster, natural or otherwise, but there is nothing innocent about the look in this child’s eyes, rather there is mistrust and deep, deep hurt.
Given the scenes of mayhem which preceded it I was surprised to find this quiet image and amazed by the potency of the simple gesture of affection. I’ll get back to the sport pictures.
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