The ongoing war against passion-driven stupidity
No, not of the sexual kind (although sometimes, I do wonder..) The passion I’m talking about is the love of horses.
In my line of work of press photographer, I face a wide variety of subjects, stories and people on a daily basis. This is one of the main reasons why I love the job so much but, as you would expect, sometimes you shoot happy stories and sometimes you cover the darker sides of life.
Now some time ago, I went to Brighton to cover the annual Labour Party Conference. Normally a mixture of dry speeches and photo-calls mixed with the occasional bit of interest, the 2004 conference proved no different with lots of Blair-based handshakes and the odd “down with this sort of thing” placard-waving protestor.
However, that changed when the pro-fox hunt groups galloped into town and decided to do this..
Now as it happened, I was shooting for The Times newspaper that day and was the only press photographer who got the shot which is a shame as The Times used it once, buried in a supplement and it’s never been printed since but that’s a separate story.
The pro-hunt group pulled up in a busy shopping street, opened the rear doors of their van, tied a rope to a lamp post then edged the van away, dragging the corpse onto the road. A man got out of the van and wedged the placard through the horses ribcage and drove off. The ensuing upset saw pro-hunt supporters (to rear of frame) smiling and clapping with local residents looking on shocked and disturbed with a group of girls near me, crying uncontrollably.
Fast forward a few years and I STILL get a very regular stream of angry people contacting me to tell me that I am, in fact, Satan’s more evil brother. This happens on such a regular basis that I have a standard response in a folder that I copy and paste into my replies;
I’m consistently astounded and disappointed by people thinking that they
have the right to order me to remove pictures from my site.“Journalist”: a person who practices journalism, the gathering and
dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and
people.Why is it only the animal lovers that seem to fail to grasp this idea? I’ve
also photographed fashion shows but never get emails from clothes lovers
asking how I designed the dresses. I’ve shot football matches but don’t get
emails from fans asking me how I scored the goal. For some reason, I get a
reasonably regular flow of misdirected diatribe from horse lovers thinking
that for some reason I personally decided to kill a horse. If you got this
email address, surely you read the rest of my site and looked at the other
images to see that I am a news photographer so take pictures of the news,
whatever it may be?The news is all about raising awareness of issues that can range from
light-hearted nonsense to the darker aspects of life and death. To think
that things that upset you should be removed from public view is very
narrow-minded and would result in actions and events that you disagree with
happening without your knowledge, therefore denying you a chance to voice
your opinion and fight for your rights. Would you be happier if your daily
newspaper only featured photographs of happiness and rainbows or do you
actually find current affairs and events stimulating to conversations and
opinion?If someone takes a photo of a dead animal, is that automatically condoning it’s death or
is it allowing human beings to display the intelligence that they are born
with and make their own decision? Your blinkered vision of right and wrong
and how to go about highlighting your cause is decidedly naïve.So, in response to your demand for me to remove the image, the answer is no.
This will undoubtedly lead to a continued flow of venomous
emails from people such as yourself but I believe that life and opinion should always
remain balanced.I hope that next time you feel like sending an aggressive email such as the
ones that I received from you, you carefully check your details and facts
first to make sure you’re abusing the right person.
I’m still trying to decide if I should publish these rambling threats and abuse on this blog. A consistent theme of too many exclamation marks, a personal insult followed by a demand for the pictures destruction/removal provide quite a nice theme to them. Almost poetic. If anyone reads this and wants to see some of it, let me know and I’ll post a few here. If anyone reads this and wants to tell me how cruel I am and ask me why I killed a horse, you know where to find me.
L
Yeah come one Leon, lets see what these numbskulls have sent to you!
U r really mean and dat is a stupid thing to do just cus der banning hunting
and y wuld u like to hunt anyway u sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick
sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sicksick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sicksick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sicksick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick idiot i hate u !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
nobody likes this page anyway
Frm bob
It looks like Leon posted one to show you, Adcuz, but no, this is a genuine new post above, just beautifully timed
I think it is a awful thing that has happened, and I think you should remove the image, but keep the story, I believe it should be removed from Google, when I typed in horse, I was shocked couldn’t believe what I saw, I hope you remove this as I think you should.
Jonathan, you’re really missing the point of my thread above. If you were doing a school project on Vietnam and you type the name in to google images, the very first picture you get is of a group of schoolchildren, running naked down a road, suffering from horrific napalm burns. I may be wrong but I’m guessing that Nick Ut, the photographer that shot this pulitzer prize winning image, will not get emails asking him to remove the image from the internet as it’s disturbing. At the risk of repetition, it’s wrong to think that images that upset should be removed from view. Bad things happen.
These people replying surely have no ounce of intellect. I have a family, luckily they are all still alive, but on the way to work I saw 3 photos in the paper of dead people from the cyclone and earthquake. I am not blaming the photographer for these deaths, as Leon said, he is bringing the story, in a neutral way to everyones eyes, for them to make their mind up! All these comments must be coming from the same inbred chain of people who killed the horse. A ‘Pro-hunt’ group, dropped the dead horse on the street! Now, they might have killed the horse for this stunt, it might have died naturally, it might have been one of the unfortunate horses that top themselves at the Grand National each year. But this was a dead horse, put there by a Pro-hunt group, a group that like to hunt, probably like to hunt on horses, they must LOVE horses! How fucked up are they! That would be like killing your Dad in protest over the possible ban on Fathers Day! You bunch of douchebags, pay attention and use your inbred shriveled brains to work this one out.
I would like to say that these are Hilarious but it was only brought to my knowlegde because of a friend(Jonathan) telling me. He said that it was disgusting and it should be taken down at frist i was inclined to agree. However i read more and came to realises that it is extremly hypocrtical of all thosde asking for it to be taken down. As the news is posted everyday and we say nothing, if all the people in the world that tried to change the fact the image has been posted, the world could actually make a true difference to something that matters. You could stop poverty, so get your heads out of the sand and grow up, sh*t happens get over it!
tabascokid, no, you are really missing the point, yes you can type what you say in, and a upseting image might be on. But I didn’t type in Dead Horses, I typed in horses, and yes bad things happen, but they shouldn’t happen anywhy, I am rushing this and listening to a song a like which is Sarah B, love song
Sam; Thank you. It makes it worthwhile if, after reading the blog, someone’s convinced that writing a critical email to me isn’t such a good idea after all.
Jonathan; I’m really struggling to work out what I did in a previous incarnation to deserve having to face emails from you.
This is rediculous how can Bob not read the post above yet reply with such shite?
What is the world coming to? People who cannot spell thinking they have the right to take the higher ground. People who do not realise that if it were not for the picture of the dead horse nobody would have read the story. Hurrah for Sam! Huzzah for Leon (huzzah is a little bit better than Hurrah). I think it’s a fantastic photograph. It is utterly fit for purpose. It is people who turn their face away that condone the horrors of the world and allow them to continue. It is selfish to refuse to accept that this is an image that should be looked at. Because what you don’t know can’t hurt YOU can it and thats all that matters isn’t it Bob, J Stamp, Jonathon?
J Stamp. Complain to google if their searches are not accurate.
Not sure what I can add to this but look at some of the comments in the light that a donkey charity in the West Country gets more money than three charities for women suffering from domestic violence put together and you start to wonder when it all went wrong.
It’s JonathAn, I can under where your coming from, but I don’t find the photo fantastic, and people feel more careing to animals than human, I see The B. Zephyr is not one of them
JonathAn, I’m glad that you’re slowly reaching a more reasonable point of view. I get the idea; you don’t like the picture. Now it would probably cause you less distress if you were to stop visiting the site.
It’s not the site which is distressing, and am not distress to start with, it was the image, not the story. and it’s Jonathan, I did the JonathAn, because you thought my name was JonathOn
Good lord, it’s like being pursued by a T1000 from a particularly dim future..
lol!
Leon
I suppose it’s one of the pitfalls of the profession you are in that in the same way a magnet will attract iron filings, you will end up attracting emails from both the completely stupid, and weirdo’s who have way too much time on their hands. How anyone can ask you to take the picture down is beyond me. It was a news story. The Countryside Alliance supporters ( or whichever similar group ) staged the event, did so to try and cause shock at the Labour party conferenct of that year. In hindsight, I would guess they were probably quite relieved the photograph didn’t receive a wider covering as doing such things, even to dead animals is completely out of order, and would probably have backfired on their cause.
Back to the emails. I guess you can only go so far trying to educate people as to the merits of why such terrible atrocities such be shown. People need to be told that that scene was staged by so called ‘horse lovers’. The ban was put in place by the government, and yet three years later, I don’t recall ever driving past a dead horse in the middle of a high street.
As for bob ( with a little ‘b’ ), I don’t think the poor guy had the mental capacity to take in both the photograph, and the fact you were not one of the perpetrators.
Keep up the good work Neon, and regard the hostile emails as an amusement on the side.
Great photojournalism, shame about the idiots. It’s a credit to you that you deal with them so fairly and courteously. Keep up the good work!
Hi Leon
The unthinking comments here just show what people are really like unfortunately. I can remember commenting on this picture on flickr ages ago, I can’t believe its still causing disturbance… its sad that people are complaining about seeing the image of the event, rather than the event which it documents, as if you stuck the sign in the horse! Its a strange old world we live in… its sad too.
Guardians of the countryside? Don’t make me laugh…
Joey
It’s always good to hear that intelligent people are prepared to leave comments too. The internet is a dangerous playground that is often only filled with those who need to vent or fight.
In case you missed it, there’s been an update to this saga..
http://www.leonneal.com/blog/2008/06/30/the-war-continues/
i think the picture of the dead horse os wrong but the event was to. yes i agree with the ban but there was no need to put a dead horse in the middle of the road with a sign stuck in the middle of it!!!!!!!! lol.
Looking at some of the replies I would say you’re flogging a dead horse here.