I hate to spoil a good story, but...

@maxr

I've done as you said, i.e. tried to be constructive.

Firstly, I'd like to investigate more. These days, more than ever, I use the rule: Follow the Money

• This might have been a hoax. It was worth checking. No sign of a hoax yet, but I found THIS similar story

• The Toronto Star is a high-circulation newspaper with the second-highest decline in readership.

• The newspaper will know better than to have gone to press with this story without talking to the school. As it appears, they've printed a photo from somebody along with their own story. They've got an online comments section and, to the right, a number of pay-per-click advertisements.

• The Herbert Spencer School is available for comment.

Our school is located at 605 Second Street, New Westminster, B.C. V3L 4R1. Our Principal is Tracy Fulton, our Vice-Principal is Patti Peterson and our Secretaries are Chris Walton and Ann Michaud. Please contact us at 604-517-6030 or fax us at 604-517-6031.

• Desperate newspapers can sometimes cut corners in order to save on journalists' leg-work. Opinion from readers, posted online, is free and generates lots of hits.

• Getting parents of all kids to sign release forms for a class photo is normal. Going back to get more releases for newspaper publication requires time and expense. Blurring the faces in the photo takes 10 minutes.

• The Toronto Star has possibly done no more than copy and paste an email with photo they've received.

I'm waiting to hear what the school says. So far, that's all I'll be contributing.

Why are children's faces blurred?

Cheaper.

Going back to get more releases [signed by parents] for newspaper publication requires time and expense. Blurring the faces in the photo [instead, obscures their identity, requires no parents' permission] takes [only] 10 minutes.

It turns out, this story was covered earlier- and in more detail - in another paper, the Times Colonist on the previous day.

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/b-c/the-photo-that-broke-a-mother-s-heart-1.321803

Belanger posted the photo to the photography company’s Facebook page. Lifetouch Canada removed the photo with a message that it was taken down due to privacy laws, but that they had sent it to their head office.

Not satisfied with their response, Belanger posted the photo again with the other children’s faces blacked out.

The Times Colonist, while seeming to have interviewed the boy's parents, make no mention of any attempt to get hold of the other parties.

Perhaps by serendipity, this story broke on a Friday. Was this such a pressing issue that it couldn't wait until school and photography business Lifetouch Canada opened on Monday? In the meantime, they've managed to garner heaps of comment from readers all to eager to speculate as to what had gone on. Had the story been covered properly, there would have been less public comment.

Sorry about being such a sceptic. We live in strange media times!

I still want to hear from both the school and the photographer.

Sometimes I am trully shocked about problems discussed in US seriously.

Strangely, our attention was drawn to the plight of the wheelchair kid at the same time as the G8 conference.

I was watching the TV news and couldn't believe my ears as both Cameron and Putin, side by side, each announced that they were independently arming opposite sides in the Syrian conflict - the UK siding with the Syrian Rebels and Russia arming the Syrian army. What amazed me most was the nonchalant way the speaker announced the vision - as if nothing in particular had been said! No journalists were at the back of the studio in the newsroom, typing. No direct cross to Dublin, no foreign affairs specialist to help us understand the significance or threat implied by what had just been said.

As John Malkovich said, "And now, sports!"

It's like the rock - paper - scissors game. Paper trumps a rock.These days, in the public's mind, wheelchair photo trumps international crisis.

One of the marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live according to a generalized image-repertoire. Consider the United Sates, where everything is transformed into images: only images exist and are produced and are consumes ... Such a reversal necessarily raises the ethical question: not that the image is immoral, irreligious, or diabolic (as some have declared it, upon the advent of the Photograph), but because, when generalized, it completely de-realizes the human world of conflicts and desires, under cover of illustrating it.

Each photograph is read as the private appearance of its referent: the age of Photography corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the public, or rather into the creation of a new social value, which is the publicity of the private: the private is consumes as such, publicly.

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

In a world in which photography is brilliantly at the service of consumerist manipulations, no effect of a photograph of a doleful scene can be taken for granted. The hunt for more dramatic ... images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and a source of value .... The image as shock and the image as cliche are two aspects of the same presence.

Photographs objectify, they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed. And photographs are a species of alchemy, for all that they are prized as a transparent account of reality.

For photographs to accuse, and possibly to alter conduct, they must shock.

The national consensus on American history as a history of progress is a new setting for distressing photographs--one that focuses our attention on wrongs...for which America sees itself as a solution or cure.

the determining influence of photographs in shaping what catastrophes and crises we pay attention to, what we care about, and ultimately what evaluations are attached to these conflicts.

Susan Sontag

OK, now that the school has apologised...

I'm glad. I sort of worried that their delay might indicate that somehow lawyers might have got involved to, you know, keep it out of the papers. I thought (heaven forbid) that this was going to be settled by some sort of payout (as if that's going to change anything).

OK, now that the dust has settled..

I think that the photographer has managed - possibly by mistake - to create a lasting image which might even go on to become a classic.

Or else, just maybe, saw this one shot with the kid off to one side, and recognised it for what it is, and decided not to change a thing.

BTW The first light picture ever taken by Robert Cornelious, 1839 • aka original selfie sin :P

From latest selfies scandals, ahhhrrggg so much hypocrisy!!!
Obama and co. at Mandela's memorial having fun for FCS

Though lately there has been an interesting heterogeneous succession of events relating the image world: Calumet bankruptcy, canadian photojournalist Ali Moustafa killed in Syria (air strike), Getty Images "giving away free use" of their database (ejem!) and mining stock business, next chapter in Terry Richardson's relation with models soup opera (poor model being ask to squeeze his balls and doing it so), etc. For the thread I've chosen this image

Source: nydailynews

 
the one it came to mind right-away

 
and a follow up, S. Salgado's Journey to the Heavens image

 
 
I think this trio of images can help our brains ponder about, ethics, aesthetics, journalism, living out of highly aesthetisizing people's misery (what S. Salgado does in my opinion, with phenomenal technique yes but nevertheless), what's the right moment of an action?, what the fuck is common sense?, does it help to have it?, how can someone endure living after the vulture (actually Kevin Carter killed himself, but there's much more to that story that the photo and subsequent Pulitzer prize - only), how does mass media shape our perception of the world?, how does it affect and change moral patters?, etc. etc.  •  gasho

@kurth Firstly off, as I wrote above, KC committed suicide but his story has much more to it than this guilt (which I agree IF seen as an “impersonative” guilt of the human race, an irredeemable sense of hopelessness before LIFE). KC had a troubled personality and very very stressful job. He dug drugs big time too. Then WE decided his picture of announced DEATH deserved a prize; here you are son, you go find more dying children and we will delivered them as news. Dangerous cocktail, wouldn’t you say?

When I was in Africa filming a doc, some people I knew died, FAST. In my “spare” time I enrolled multitude of tasks, one of them being in the team driving an ambulance from the bush to the city hospital, which to be honest was more of a slaughter house than any other thing… I still remember the day the new born baby died. I could go on for hours on how many grey nuances has any standpoint; like the mother of the baby, she had been carrying that being, her child, for 9 months, then she had to go through a very complicated and painful delivery so that the poor thing left this world in the way to the hospital. She cried rivers, oceans holding her baby in the arms, she screamed like only mad people do… she was devastated. But, do you think she’s going to spend the rest of her life moaning her loss?… her life is much more simple than that, she has 4 more mouths to feed and husband with AIDS.

From the hundreds of people who came positive in the AIDS tests, do you think any of them cried or was sick worried? HOPELESSNESS!!!, in a force that most of us living in the comfort of our western society cannot imagine. That makes you “accept / surrender”. That, the western humanitarian aid (people infected know too well they’re getting a huge deal of basics if they bring positive proof in AIDS tests, also free medicine) and the son of a bitch of the Pope, that at the time came to Africa to remind every soul the wonderful wisdom that condoms were sinful.

I lived that every single day and when I went to bed, drunk most of the nights (only way I managed to sleep), I cried like a baby… not only because of the sad things, also touched and overwhelmed beyond measure by the manifestations of joy, trueness, sympathy, purity, playfulness, innocence and kindness the scum of the scum of god’s forgotten dirty thoughts kept relentlessly showing. You place yourself amidst 100 orphan childs and let your heart melt like wax =) just be real careful with scratches

So, what I mean is that it can be very easy to narrow reality to what our belief system is… but normally most things have a lot going on on the backstage… not to even mention CONTEXT. Objectivity isolated it’s just not posible, and context doesn’t provide the whole picture. IMO that’s one of the reasons common sense it’s many times turned into a dangerous brainwashing tool.

Now, to try and set a common ground, I would dare to think out loud that we’re looking at 3 images, 3 photographs.
These images have all being registered deliberately | re-gestum, we could say something done backwards
Each photography had its own sociocultural context as-well as a production value.
Each individual capturing the image(s) was a pro; had the skill/know-how, lives out of “creating” images (narrowing reality) and furthermore KNOWS their production value.
Each individual taking the image(s) had his (all men) own personal context.
Probably each photographer has also a minimum of a belief system, ethic values, philosophy, why not. Does that mean that their jobs and actions are always ruled by them?… incoherence is important parameter to keep in mind too.
The 3 images have been iconisized by mass media’s cultural standards. Other than the pulitzer KC got, S.S's body of work it’s unequivocally sanctioned as high art.
The first photography carries the most dose of humour as mass media, yeah that porn actress refurbished as news anchor woman, empowers the photographer’s attitude as an example of moral conduct.

I’m tired now… and out of beer, the horror, THE HORROR!!!

Hey de-culturated @kurth :P I think you're wrong about me being wrong, je je, as I never said they or we are different. I observed they just have a (much) different context in general and quite inescapably living conditions... which is demonstrated scientifically impossible for me to look at if not from my subjective and very strongly contextualized background.

That said, you make fair points / strong comparisons, also in previous post, I really failed to saw them, must have been too focus on producing a meaningful somethin', sorry about that.

It looks like I also undermined my own attempt of trying to push the argument into the images themselves; how do western cultural bulwarks analyze, react, (if) sanction and lately sell back to us a packaged meaning for those 3 images? All 3 are supposed to be registering stressful realities and all 3 have been, in different cultural niches, morally awarded and mediated... made icons.

About Carter, I really think he spiraled out and if, as you put it he was weighing god's failures against his own... well we really cannot blame him for killing himself 'cause depending on the days "god" can deliver some awful shitty job, don't you think?