photography


St ry behind the


picture Victim of an oil spill By Paul Glendell


In 1996, I was commissioned by WWF in Switzerland to photograph the Sea Empress oil spill off the west Wales coast Arriving too late in the evening to do any photography, I retired to the


pub. Leaning on the bar with my first pint, I got in to conversation with the person leading the clean-up for the port authority. He had just dropped in for a drink on his way home. “The oil is coming ashore at Manorbier beach right now,” he told me. “There will be a big clean up there first thing tomorrow morning” I arrived at the beach at first light with the intention of getting shots both of the beach before the clean-up and of the workers removing the sludge covering the bay. Scanning the black mess strewn before me, I could see a struggling


bird. I approached carefully but the guillemot was incapable of going anywhere. I spent half an hour photographing it, hoping to get a shot with its wings outspread. Not only did the photo appear in Life magazine as a double-page spread but it also received an award of excellence in a ‘pictures of the year’ competition in the US after Life entered it for me. I felt I could not leave the bird on the beach to its fate, so I caught it and


handed it over to the RSPCA rescue unit. Whether it survived on not, I have no idea.


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