There is a moment in Ian McEwan’s newest book, Solar which exemplifies all that is exciting and infuriating about the act of photographing:
There were half a dozen older women among the demonstrators. One of them nipped out from behind a policeman, took a tomato from a brown paper bag, and threw it at BEard. She was ten feet away and there was no time to dodge. A rotten tomato is an item of urban legend. This one, though soft, looked perfectly edible. It flopped against his lapel and clung there a moment. When it fell, he caught it in his open palm and with a quick, impulsive movement chucked it back, an entirely playful gesture, he tried to explain afterward, without anger or malice. Why else throw it underarm? The tomato, its skin now ruptured, hit the woman full in the face, just to the right of her nose. With a strange sound, a plaintive musical hoot, the woman, who was about Beard’s age and almost as plump, brought her hands up to her face, somehow trapping and smearing the tomato against her features, and at the same time sank to her knees.
In color, it made a dramatic photograph. Taken from behind Beard, it showed him looming over a woman cowering on the ground, the victim of a gory assault. In Germany it was on the cover of a magazine with the headline “Protestor Felled by ‘Neo-Nazi’ Professor.” In the background, not quite out of focus, was the relevant placard. Another picture, also widely used, taken over the head of teh kneeling woman, revealed Beard’s heartless smile. He could not help himself, he was genuinely amused. The tomato was so soft, his toss to gentle, the woman’s reaction so comically overplayed, a policeman so solicitous in bending over her, another so self-important as he urgently radioed for an ambulance. This was street theater.
The book, by the way, is very darkly funny and contains the usual trademark McEwan normal situations turned on their head, including potato chip revelations, scientific innovation by way of adultery, and “calving” genitalia. I haven’t finished yet, but I’d recommend it.
