"Nonstop imagery is our surround, but when it comes to remembering, the photograph has the deeper bite....
In an era of information overload, the photograph..is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb."
(Susan Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others 2003)

23 March, 2008

Is this the first still television image you really remember?

Listening to the lugubrious & wryly hilarious Stuart Maconie on (shock horror/apologies...) BBC Radio 2 yesterday afternoon, I was vividly reminded of the shots of the US Space Shuttle Challenger exploding (imploding?) not long after lift-off more than 20 years ago. These images have stayed with me to this day. It was probably the first time I - then a rookie foreign correspondent - had watched a disaster of this magnitude unfold in real time.
Yet somehow - it is the still image which remains. Discuss......