Like Water & Oil? Fashion photography as journalistic comment

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 821-837
Author(s):  
Megan Le Masurier
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Fashion Photography ◽  
Digital Readers ◽  
Women's Magazine

In its August issue 2010, Vogue Italia ran a 24-page fashion editorial by photographer Steven Meisel. Entitled ‘Water & Oil’, it was inspired by the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that began in April that year. The shoot caused an uproar in both new and old media. Across the journalistic coverage of the shoot and the attendant commentary from digital readers and bloggers was an underlying sentiment that a boundary had been crossed, that high fashion photography had no right to use environmental catastrophe as a backdrop for the promotion of fashion. Much of the online commentary echoed Angela McRobbie’s argument, that fashion media (and especially Vogue) can only conceive of political reality as ‘gestures of style … they can never take the form of social analysis’. This essay poses two questions: can fashion photography sometimes perform the usually journalistic work of cultural and political comment? And how can we understand the resistance to such a function, especially in a commercial women’s magazine like Vogue? Sitting at the intersection of cultural studies and journalism studies, it will draw on the work of John Hartley to answer these questions. Laying out the discourse surrounding the controversial photo spread, this essay explains how the images created by Meisel are ‘matter out of place’. They provoke us to re-evaluate what journalism is and who is allowed to perform it.

Restoring barrier habitat in Louisiana to compensate for natural resource injuries: Shell Island and Chenier Ronquille Barrier Restoration Projects

Shore & Beach ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 65-71
Author(s):  
Whitney Thompson ◽  
Christopher Paul ◽  
John Darnall
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Barrier Island ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Coastal Protection ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Island Restoration ◽  
Barataria Basin ◽  
Outer Coast

Coastal Louisiana received significant funds tied to BP penalties as a result of the Deepwater Horizon incident. As it is widely considered that the State of Louisiana sustained most of the damage due to this incident, there has been a firm push to waste no time in implementing habitat restoration projects. Sustaining the land on the coast of Louisiana is vital to our nation’s economy, as several of the nation’s largest ports are located on the Gulf coast in Louisiana. In addition, the ecosystems making up the Louisiana coast are important to sustain some of the largest and most valuable fisheries in the nation. Funded by BP Phase 3 Early Restoration, the goals of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) Outer Coast Restoration Project are to restore beach, dune, and marsh habitats to help compensate spill-related injuries to habitats and species, specifically brown pelicans, terns, skimmers, and gulls. Four island components in Louisiana were funded under this project; Shell Island Barrier Restoration, Chenier Ronquille Barrier Island Restoration, Caillou Lake Headlands Barrier Island Restoration, and North Breton Island Restoration (https://www. gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/louisiana-outer-coast-restoration, NOAA 2018). Shell Island and Chenier Ronquille are critical pieces of barrier shoreline within the Barataria Basin in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. These large-scale restoration projects were completed in the years following the Deepwater Horizon incident, creating new habitat and reinforcing Louisiana’s Gulf of Mexico shoreline. The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) finished construction of the Shell Island NRDA Restoration Project in 2017, which restored two barrier islands in Plaquemines Parish utilizing sand hydraulically dredged from the Mississippi River and pumped via pipeline over 20 miles over levees and through towns, marinas, and marshes to the coastline. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) also completed the Plaquemines Parish barrier island restoration at Chenier Ronquille in 2017 utilizing nearshore Gulf of Mexico sediment, restoring wetland, coastal, and nearshore habitat in the Barataria Basin. A design and construction overview is provided herein.

scholarly journals Impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep-water coral community in the Gulf of Mexico

2012 ◽  
Vol 109 (50) ◽  
pp. 20303-20308 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. K. White ◽  
P.-Y. Hsing ◽  
W. Cho ◽  
T. M. Shank ◽  
E. E. Cordes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Deep Water ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Coral Community ◽  
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill ◽  
Water Coral

scholarly journals Erratum: Corrigendum: Quantifying overlap between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and predicted bluefin tuna spawning habitat in the Gulf of Mexico

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott L. Hazen ◽  
Aaron B. Carlisle ◽  
Steven G. Wilson ◽  
James E. Ganong ◽  
Michael R. Castleton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Oil Spill ◽  
Bluefin Tuna ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Spawning Habitat ◽  
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Screening Level Assessment of Risks Due to Dioxin Emissions from Burning Oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Spill

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (24) ◽  
pp. 9383-9389 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Schaum ◽  
Mark Cohen ◽  
Steven Perry ◽  
Richard Artz ◽  
Roland Draxler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Deepwater Horizon

Slouching Toward Disaster

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Batzer ◽  
John S. Morse
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Gulf Of Mexico ◽  
Slow Motion ◽  
Deepwater Horizon ◽  
Complete Loss ◽  
Missing Information ◽  
Financial Loss ◽  
Low Profile ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Individual Decisions

“But, who cares, it’s done, end of story, [we] will probably be fine and we’ll get a good cement job.” This is an oft-repeated email quotation from one BP engineer to another on April 16, 2010, just four days before the Macondo well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico. Although these two men survived, 11 others did not. The well blowout also brought with it poisoning of the ecology and vast financial loss. This quote, part of a discussion about centralizers for the well (BP ended up with just six instead of the planned 16 or 21), seems to epitomize the attitude regarding a series of decisions made about the well’s design. The product of the decisions was complete loss and worse. However, the parties did not seem to be aware of the importance of their individual decisions or their consequences as they were making them. This disaster, like many others, seemed in retrospect to unfold in slow motion, and the players involved did not perceive the sheer cliff before them until they had transgressed its edge. This paper will examine decision-making processes in the Deepwater Horizon blowout and a series of other disasters, both high and low profile events. All of these preventable events stemmed from decision-making failures. These failures include disregarding existing information, failing to soberly extrapolate “what if?” when existing information contained uncertainty, failing to obtain vital missing information, failing to question decisions — particularly from those considered authoritative, and a cavalier attitude regarding rules because probably nothing will happen anyway. “Who cares?”

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