The Boston Photographs

The Boston Photographs Stanley Foreman, a journalist for the Boston Herald American, captured three famous photographs of a fire rescue case which reminded me of my grandmothers tragedy, displayed the themes of tragedy and anger, parallels to the movie World Trade Center, and aligns with my opinion that Foreman published the photographs rightfully. Foreman snapped the camera thinking to take heroic shots of a brave fireman successfully rescuing a woman and a child. Little did he know, he would capture the collapse of final hope as a woman fell into the gateway to death. A fire immersed a Boston building in the 1930s. A fireman desperately attempted to save a woman and a child from the inferno, and almost came to success. However, the fire escape the three stood upon crumbled from the arm of the building just before the fireman could hoist them onto the ladder of the firetruck. The fireman managed to jump to safety onto the ladder as the ledge broke. Unfortunately, the woman could not cling tightly enough to the fireman, therefore, her and the child dropped stories high onto the solid ground. The woman died immediately from impact, but the child fell onto the cushion of her corpse and managed to survive. The treacherous scene showed on three photographs and became published in over four hundred newspapers across America. Understandably, this raised controversy as the public fired back with complaints of the gory pictures. Some argued that it contributed in, “Invading the privacy of death,” while others said it took responsibility in “Assigning the agony of a human being in terror of imminent death to the status of a side-show act” (Ephron, 658). Ephron states her opinion in this essay saying, “Death happens to be one of life 's main events. And it is irresponsible—and more than that, inaccurate—for newspapers to fail to show it...” (Ephron, 662). This essay brought me back to my youth with replaying images of what I imagined the scene of my grandmother 's

Cited: Ephron, Nora. “The Boston Photographs.” The Norton Reader. Peterson, Linda. 13th Edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 657-662.