The shot is striking: we see two people at the beach, comfortably seated under a parasol, contemplating the fires igniting the southwest of France as if it were a sunset.
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For many Internet users, the photo taken on July 27 by Maximilien Lamy, editor for Agence France-Presse (AFP), in the French department of Girdone, perfectly illustrates the general laxity in the face of climate change.
“When a single photo says a lot about the state of our world,” said Columbia University professor and special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council, Agnès Callamard, by republishing the photo.
The image made the rounds in the media around the world, including the front page of Wall Street Journal. It was also taken up by the New York Times and the British daily The Guardian.
Maximilien Lamy was on vacation in the Lacanau region of southwest France when he was forced to flee his campsite with his daughter due to the rapid progression of the fires.
“We found ourselves in an apocalyptic atmosphere”
It was during his escape that Mr. Lamy saw a couple lying under a parasol observing the forest fires from the beach.
“When I arrived on the beach, the weather was fine, but the wind suddenly changed and we found ourselves in a totally apocalyptic atmosphere with stunned vacationers, but who for the most part did not move, because the danger was not immediate,” he told the newspaper. Liberation.
And it is precisely this discrepancy that is striking: while a disaster is underway, the people near the blaze are calmly enjoying an afternoon of rest.
“We have the impression that they are facing the spectacle of the world burning,” confided the photographer while specifying that he did not judge his subjects.
He also called on Internet users for clemency.
“They are on vacation, there is no immediate danger for them, and there is nothing else they can do anyway. Would we really have acted differently? “, he asked.
– With information from Liberation et West France.
