Brent Stirton for Reportage by Getty Images

We arrived with my husband Jean Pierre Laffont in Kenya in July, 2007.

It was our first safari. At the urging of some of our African friends, we wanted to experience the African wildlife and to watch the big animals, especially the lions and the elephants, in their natural habitat.

We had a fantastic time photographing those stunningly beautiful animals in their majestic landscape. It was love at first sight and we felt we had found paradise on earth.

So it was a great shock when, one morning, at a newsstand in Nairobi, we saw Newsweek magazine and its cover story “Slaughter in the Jungle” (August 6 2007) with the shocking photographs taken by Brent Stirton of the killing of the gorillas in the jungle of Congo.

In this extraordinary reportage, there is one unforgettable image: The hard hitting photograph of the 600 pounds silverback gorilla dead body carried by 20 men on a wooden stretcher. Murdered is this magnificent animal, king of the great ape, this pacific giant preoccupied only by the well being of his family, this peaceful vegetarian whose territory is taken away from him. This truly heart-breaking photo inevitably brings to mind the King Kong legend. We all have a deep emotional connection with King Kong, a symbol of strength and fierceness, killed by the cruelty of man.

We killed King Kong again but this time for real and we are distroying the paradise we have yet to discover and understand.

“Why?” We keep asking ourselves. “What men would do that?” And even these days, the rangers, the park officials and the conservationists are not sure.

The enemies are everywhere and the crimes are no longer committed only by small and organized-money-hungry groups. Poachers, hunters, bushmeat eaters, habitat destruction builders, merchants and contraband wildlife traffickers are now organized criminal gangs and armed militia men. Authorities suspect links between illegal trafficking and terrorism groups.

Violence, vandalism, human greed and cruelty are destroying innocence and beauty and the consequences are devastating, not just for our future but the future of our children as well.

It is too late now to undo what has been done to this family of gorillas in the jungle of Congo but it is not too late to expose the facts, alert public attention and help bring solutions. This is why Brent Stirton’s photos are so important. They show us the unbearable crime, bring in the spotlight the plight of animals and force us to pay attention to conservation issues.

Like Nick Ut’s photograph of the naked little girl running down the road in Vietnam had a decisive influence of the shift of public opinion toward the war in Vietnam, Brent Stirton’s photo of the dead gorilla being carried away from the wilderness of the jungle in Congo, is a warning cry we need to pay attention to and do something about, if we want to save us and the world we live in.

Eliane Laffont, March 10, 2008

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Brent Stirton, Congo, Getty Images, Gorillas, assassination, environment, photojournalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.