Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/09/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]A lot of pro photographers and amateurs made pictures of the famous car accident. Just a couple of the seven photographers now probed for manslaughter represented "people" (paparazzi) agencies. The others represented respectable French agencies like Gamma, Sipa, and Sygma, i.e. news photographers. One of them, Jacques Langevin of the Sygma photographic agency, won awards for photographs of the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre. Sygma director Hubert Henrotte vigorously denied that Langevin was one of the "paparazzi" accused of chasing Diana to her death. He arrived at the scene several minutes after the crash and only took pictures of the rescue efforts and the wrecked car. The photographers' lawyers said that all seven, and others who escaped arrest, had snapped pictures of the wreck, leaving them open to a charge of failing to assist victims. The photographers are clearly "scapegoats" serving a showbiz justice, carried out for the Foreign Ministry in order to improve France's image. Langevin and Nicolas Arsov (Sipa) were brought before the judge in handcuffs. If you get awards for snapping dead Chinese why do you get the world's wrath descending on your head for taking pictures of a car-crash? The next time a plane crashes let's arrest all the people photographing THAT. The bikes were following the car at a distance of 200 meters. That's "following", not pursuing or hounding. Oddmund