The Boston Photographs

In Nora Ephron’s essay, The Boston Photographs, Ephron talks about three pictures that were taken in Boston outside of an apartment. The first picture is of a fireman, a woman, and her child standing on a fire escape as the building behind them is on fire. The second photo is of the fire escape breaking from the building, and the third picture is of the woman and child falling from the building. Ephron describes in her essay the negative response the editor’s received from the public about publishing these pictures in newspapers across the nation. She feels that these pictures deserve to be printed and are a perfect example of how photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism. She also argues that the press tends to only print the good news so it would only be realistic for the press to show the unfortunate news as well. In the actual story of the woman and child, the woman died on impact but the child lived because he landed on top of the mother. Ephron also argues that if the both the woman and child would have survived then the public wouldn’t have any complaints about the photos. It is the fact that she died that some say her privacy of death was unfairly taken away from her. Ephron feels that if people are dying in the world everyday then it shouldn’t be that big of a deal for the public to see pictures similar to the ones in this essay. I agree with Ephron because the pictures weren’t grotesque or of corpses, but rather action shots of a real life scene. It is extremely sad and unfortunate that this chain of events occurred for the mother and child, but I feel their privacy wasn’t exposed negatively through these pictures. I understand why some readers would take offense to the pictures and complain, but I don’t think the editors were in the wrong in this situation.