Snow White and the camera siege
Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images
The London Times ran this photo on Saturday of Ségolène Royal the new Blair-like Socialist candidate for the Presidency in France. Shot by AFP’s Eric Feferberg in colour, The Times ran it large in black and white.
It’s a brilliant, dramatic news shot, visualizing Ségolène Royal as the rising star shaking up French political life, and highlighting the media intensity of politics, as microphones, video cameras and stills cameras lay siege.
Welcome Ségolène Royal to the world of ‘the Candidate’.
Feferberg’s image is like a Russian doll of framing, the image is composed of frames within frames, drawing attention to how we in the media ‘frame’ everything up.
There’s the outside frame, Feferberg’s own crop, inside that there’s frame of the foliage and photographers (media foliage!), and inside that the frame of the arch of the windows, and finally the frame of the door where Royal emerges. Like Snow White.
The elections next year will decide whether Royal really is the fairest of them all.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:40 pm
In the US we have not seen that many photos of Segolene, and it is hard to understand her prominence in France - this photo in many ways captures this and really denotes the beginning of her race for leadership in France.