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Thursday, February 09, 2012
February 12, 2006

Above The Hold

American-Hold

The most powerful news images are the ones which resonate equally on a political, psychological, emotional and visual level.

This photo, by Todd Heisler of The Rocky Mountain News, was one of the winners in the just concluded World Press photo contest.  I have seen this shot a number of times this year, and it continues to fascinate — and trouble.  We see eight passenger windows above a cargo hold at Reno Airport where marines are preparing to unload the casket of a fallen comrade, 2nd Lt. James Cathey.  (The full size — better for the small details — is available here.)

This is an extraordinarily robust image, one that echoes in any number of directions. As I read it, it makes an eloquent statement about the failure/inability of Americans to bear witness to the Iraq war, particularly the human cost.  (The star spangled cues linking the parties to each other and to country are almost too laden.  The plane’s signature color scheme evokes a non-verbal association to “American” Airlines.  The red, white and blue, meanwhile, binds the ribbon of passengers — assumably your everyday Americans — to the flag draped casket to the uniformed soldiers.)

Because the figures are interconnected under the patriotic banner — and because we as viewers (especially as Americans) are visually bound to the situation — and because we have been made witness to this intimate and emotional evidence of loss, the photo quietly raises the question whether other Americans (as symbolized by this sample of eight) can see it too.

The image is a poignant reminder that the war, and its bleeding, rests directly under the nose of every one of us.  (There is a much to read from that point out.  The fact these passengers peer from lit, enclosed space into the night, means they can barely see.  As a tease, the position of man #7 almost suggests he can see what’s below.  To me, the gestures of passengers #1, 3 and 5 suggest model agency head shots — suggesting everyday narcissistic tendencies and the Administration’s 9/11 mantra that the highest expression of patriotism is to go shop.)

Though the passengers even share the same body with Lt. Cathey, however, he remains hidden away in plain sight.

To look over the entire WPP award site, which I highly recommend, you can start with the photo gallery here.

(image:  Todd Heisler/The Rocky Mountain News/Polaris. worldpressphoto.com)

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  • ummabdulla

    I saw this photo the other day, and I couldn’t help but look at it for quite a while. It’s just fascinating… your eyes are drawn to the Marines below, and then up to each person in each window above (and their faces seem too big in proportion to the scene in the cargo hold), and then you stop to figure out whether they can actually see what’s going on… No, the Marines seem to be entirely inside… Do the passengers even know what’s going on? I guess so; they must have seen the Marines go in, and there are probably more waiting outside, and at least one photographer… And what are those passengers thinking?

  • http://wwww.nappydiatribe.blogspot.com HumanityCritic

    Just passing through, I’m digging the blog by the way.

  • mugatea

    Ghost in the machine.

  • http://www.livejournal.com/users/vicfitz82 Victor F

    that picture is printed on two pages in the National Press Photographers Association magazine “Press Photographer” for this month. My friend was at my apartment the other night and flipped through the magazine, barely glancing for more than a couple seconds at all the other photos in it, but stopped when he saw this one and read the picture and the caption.

  • OurFallenHeros

    Larger image, #18 of 24 (“Heading Home”), at
    http://www.time.com/time/yip/2005/index.html

  • readytoblowagasket

    Another casualty of 9/11.

  • http://www.jaxxattaxx.com black dog barking

    The passengers don’t see the casket. An open hatch blocks their view of the cargo hold. They’re looking toward a spot not far from the camera. Their mutual attention implies some kind of organized activity. A color guard? A hearse? Seems to be some pretty strong artificial light directed at the plane and its cargo. A ceremony?
    There’s a lot of story in this picture. For one thing, the quality of one’s experience is directly related to where you ride on American Airlines. It sucks to be in steerage.
    Also, though they share a cabin, the passengers in the eight windows are separate, apart. There’s no sense of togetherness even as they face the same direction, share the same momentary experience, head towards a common destination.

  • http://www.futurebird.com futurebird

    This image is an amazing convergence of the forces that have shaped the past five years of US history. The plane is a reference to 9/11 and to the economic and political chaos tied to that all important element of jet travel: fuel. The jet is in a sense the American empire and technological giant in the twilight filled with safe-seeming oblivious citizens. If the wars are needed to keep this enterprise afloat is the real fuel for our enterprise not own son and daughters? Or is there a hint of the great class divide? the separation between the people who have family over there in peril and those who benefit most from their sacrifices. And what about the great divide between wealth in the people of the various nations. Some are on the ground and making sacrifices but for whose benefit.
    And planes, as tools of international travel are also symbols of a shrinking plant– the forces of globalization may make it impossible for us to ignore what’s happening on the ground.
    I imagine what people see in this image will depend on how they see all of these conflicts.
    It’s incredible, leaving me uneasy and sad.
    If you feel uneasy when you look at this image please think about why…
    The curved hull of the plane is like a great eggshell perfect fragile filled with life, and ready to hurtle through the air like a missile, a terrifying weapon of mass destruction of our own making.

  • Marysz

    Something about this photo evokes those old Norman Rockwell covers for the Saturday Evening Post. They would show the world of the “everyday” with an added twist. The military deaths in Iraq have become part of the everyday for Americans, just one more image in the daily visual montage–one that we glance over before we turn the page.

  • jt from BC

    A cargo of high fliers and one in the cargo hold.
    All very neat and tidy.
    Images and thoughts of 2nd Lt James Cathey’s family, of Katherine who found out that their child, due in five months, would be a boy… until abruptly I was interrupted by that voice “so we don’t have to fight them here”, and the “fallen hero rhetoric” of that coward GWB completely silenced me

  • gleex

    WOW!
    That is a stirring and phenomenal picture.

  • tuffy

    I check into this site pretty much daily, and I confess that I found this photo particularly engaging. I am simultaneosly charmed and sobered by it. I really admire it when photographers are able to frame prosaic settings so inventively.
    I agree with black dog barking that a huge part of the appeal is the way the passengers above are each framed by their own window, dividing them into separate worlds, experiences, opinions. It strikes me as far more profound and personal narrative than if we were seeing a crowd of people all watching together. Each of them becomes significant as an individual confronted with this war, and somehow the losses taken individually seem to add up very quickly to a total that is much higher than the losses taken as a whole.
    It’s a bit like an advent calendar–open the little doors and you get to peer into unique and symbolic little scenes. Or a Joseph Cornell sculpture. Or a glockenspiel.

  • martin

    ever since Alan Chin’s photos (sorry; couldnt find a link for either Iraq or N’Orleans) graced this site, we have been priveliged to host perspective that holds in place looking out, looking in.
    Or perhaps vice(sic)versa.
    Ummabdullah. surely the faces in the plane are looking out at the people taking the pictures with little notion of the scale of the impact that the picture- taking will…reveal. To the inn
    It is an immense image: Ghandi came to mind

  • Kevin

    The scale of the pictures of the passengers framed within the airliner windows, compared to the scale of the soldiers and casket below, just doesn’t make sense to me.
    Am I the only one who thinks this is a photoshopped image?

  • http://www.thenewpolitics.com Chiaroscuro

    This photo is extraordinary, simultaneously capturing a discrete moment, a mood, a state of mind, and symbolic states.
    I agree with Black Dog above; the passengers’ separateness is framed by the windows–their separate thoughts, our thoughts, our physical separation from each other–and from the dead.
    The Marines alone are capable of caring at this moment for their dead comrade, doing their best to mitigate the indignity of traveling as freight.
    It is amazing compositionally as well– The repetition of colors and shapes, the nose cone pointing directly at the focal point of the coffin, the arrested motion of the watchful figures above contrasted with the purposeful action below, the fussing of the Marines around a comrade who will never move again.

  • troqua

    What I see is America detached from the war. Life goes on. People still take airplane rides for business and pleasure. No one “back home” is making wartime sacrifices. Soldiers leave without notice, and return without notice, except within the small circle of families or towns that know them.
    It doesn’t seem the passengers are aware of the sad ceremony – or indignity – taking place below them. But they must have seen the Marines enter the freight hold below them.
    They seem to see the camera, probably shooting from inside the terminal. In fact, they are all looking straight into the camera. It’s the closest any of them will get to the war. Each tiny window is a photograph of an American, untouched, detached until now, but perhaps wondering why now.

  • gasho

    A quick look at this picture – first glance – and I see the action below going on INSIDE A SEALED JAR. It took me a second to see it for what it is. But the separation between the public and the military, with the bold colored stripes, and each of them (given the visual jar) is sealed under glass.
    The soldiers are facing life and death — and trapped in their roles, but the citizens are also being isolated, seperated from the truth and from one another.
    Ultimately, both groups are in the same [boat]: In the dark, and headed for who-knows-where.

  • gasho

    A quick look at this picture – first glance – and I see the action below going on INSIDE A SEALED JAR. It took me a second to see it for what it is. But the separation between the public and the military, with the bold colored stripes, and each of them (given the visual jar) is sealed under glass.
    The soldiers are facing life and death — and trapped in their roles, but the citizens are also being isolated, seperated from the truth and from one another.
    Ultimately, both groups are in the same [boat]: In the dark, and headed for who-knows-where.

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