Original caption: A counter demonstrator uses a lighted spray can agains an Alt Right demonstrator at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Poking A Moment That’s Passed

Revisiting the sequence of events that yielded the “flamethrower” photograph in Charlottesville

There was a moment in Charlottesville when an iconic photograph was made, and for the last two weeks I haven’t been able to shake it from my mind. This past weekend, thanks to a piece in the New York Times, the photograph flared-up again into national consciousness.

I wanted to put a stake in a few issues surrounding the moment, try to look deeper at how the story (and scene) has been reported, and how, even two weeks later, its meaning has a slipperiness, as if refusing its own history.

Stairwell at the southwest corner of Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, VA

The photograph’s location. Innocuous enough. Eight steps up into the park.

I’ve never been to Charlottesville, but you get the feeling there are plenty of stories about those steps (and the park) that befit a certain kind of college town.

And yet, the steps have now acted as both stage and proscenium for two visually powerful moments; the one captured in Helber’s photo, and a second, captured on video, offering a more elongated view of the scene that enveloped the making of Helber’s…