Probably my favorite picture of the year.
It happened after the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals and the fans, well, rioted. I first posted the picture by Richard Lam of Getty that day. Then I thought it was staged. But, no, it wasn’t.
Afterward, Lam described how he got the iconic photo:
When the police finally started moving us, they were really trying to get us right out of the area. The mounted squad came in a line and started pushing the crowd toward the intersection. Then the riot police on foot took over. They charged at the crowd to push everyone back. They do that in waves. It’s like a 20 meter run. It’s a good sprint for me. They come at you pretty hard when they want to clear you out.
We stopped when they stopped and I looked back and saw two people on the street. My first instinct was that she was run over by the riot squad and that she was hurt. It made a nice frame because of the juxtaposition. You know, there’s this huge crowd on the street and in a flash of 20 seconds, it’s bare. That’s what they do. If you can’t run, you get knocked down and then they come back and clean things up. And here are two people in the middle of the street waiting to get cleaned up. I framed it with one of the officers to really emphasize the juxtaposition.
There were many other photos of more important events, from Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to any other number of events more important than idiot fans rioting because their sports team lost. But this picture is still probably my favorite of the year.
