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July 1, 2010

Gulf Update: The Wave

By Michael Shaw

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Later in July, BagNews will be presenting a live Salon discussion on the visual coverage of the oil blowout.  One questions we’ll be asking is how well the photos convey the dimension of the disaster.

The way this chocolate wave, captured by Getty photographer Joe Raedle, captures the total presence of oil, so much so that the sea looks less like water than a physical wall, it makes it easy to grasp what has otherwise been a more abstract idea of “how much” and “how bad.”

(caption: A beach goer walks on the beach where oil is seen in the water as it washes ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on June 26, 2010 in Orange Beach, Alabama. Millions of gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf since the April 20 explosion on the drilling platform.)

(photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

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  • http://reciprocity-failure.blogspot.com Stan B.

    Not to worry- Obama’s said he won’t rest until every single drop has been cleaned up (right after we “win” the war).

  • bystander

    There is a question I ponder when I see a really unusual color – on clothes, buildings, hair… – Does this color occur in nature? More often than not, like “high vis yellow” – it doesn’t. My eye is drawn to that chocolate wave in the same way it is drawn to electric blue in someone’s hair. This was man made. This is not a “natural disaster,” as some on the Right have tried to characterize it. This is an offense against nature. The source of this oil saturated wave is what ought to be denounced from the pulpit as an abomination; the human instincts, desires, and weakness that created it.

    • Glen

      I believe the crude is unrefined, direct from the uncontained well at bottom of the gulf. That color definitely does occur in nature.

    • doug

      Sure, it occurs in nature, but typically it occurs deep underground, not in waves.

  • http://justbetweenstrangers.blogspot.com/ acm

    the idea that it’s reasonable to keep drilling at depths where we’re barely able to work at all, let alone get the upper hand on a giant gusher like this, just astounds me, and yet it appears to be the Conventional Wisdom in the national governments and in many of the states affected. how brown and smogged to the air and seas have to become before it starts to matter to us?

  • black dog barking

    Surf’s up!! Looks like The Endless Summer isn’t gonna be endless after all.

    “Chocolate” is one way of describing the spiffy new tint washing up on the Gulf Coast — nicer than what immediately comes to my mind. ‘Course, if one could scratch ‘n sniff this image, “chocolate” is not the likely first word to make association.

    (What? No preview?)

  • Megan

    The man’s hands look bound behind him; the whole shot has a Stations of the Cross feel. Shirtless humanity is on the road to crucifixion, presumably for our sins (carelessness, wounding the earth).

  • http://motherrr.blogspot.com cmac

    I’m struck by the man’s posture: head down, hands behind his back, shoulders slumped. He looks defeated.

  • http://solarray.blogspot.com gmoke

    It doesn’t look that bad to me.
    You could see the same color in a wave of seaweed.
    The scale of the man to the wave is what strikes,
    and that is only one wave at one moment on one sea or ocean.

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