There's been too much senseless random violence in the world of late, including last weekend's bombing in Bali and the indiscriminate shooting of citizens around Washington DC. When lives are taken so randomly, I'm always struck by the stories in the news about how ordinary lives have been so suddenly and cruelly snuffed out. The victims' parents tell how these were happy good people who didn't have a care in the world. Work colleagues share everyday stories of ordinary people we've all met in our own lives. A row of photos in the paper can depict tens or hundreds of years of future lives snuffed out. Then there are photographs of orphaned children, and numerous sentences starting 'if only they hadn't chosen that moment to go outside...' It could, so easily, have been somebody else.
I do sometimes wonder what would happen if it was me. I'm not so much concerned by the death part of it, as by the fact that I'd be represented in the media by a small passport sized photo. There are no good small passport sized photos of me, especially not in my passport. I hate to think which photo the papers would select to represent me and my life. James Dean and Marilyn Monroe were lucky - their final photos are international icons. I'd be happy merely with a photo that looks as human as I do in real life. Even my mother dislikes the picture of me on my homepage, and has attempted to take better shots of me with her digital camera just so that she can bear logging onto the site more often. Alas, the batteries were flat the last time she tried, but it was a kind thought. So, in the meantime I live in fear of being gunned down, blown up or driven into... unless there are any other budding photographers out there with functioning batteries?
