O.C. Agency Is at Heart of Coffin Photo Debate

Scott Mc Kiernan didn’t ask to be at the center of a maelstrom.

As founding director of Zuma Press -- a relatively small editorial photo agency based in Laguna Beach -- he’s more apt to deal with photographers and editors than those who view the images for which he sells publication rights.

All that changed last month, however, when Mc Kiernan, 47, became the unwitting recipient of a photograph that stirred a national debate. The picture, taken by a civilian contract worker in Kuwait, showed more than 20 flag-draped coffins containing military casualties from Iraq being prepared for transport home aboard a cargo plane.Within 24 hours of its appearance on the front page of the Seattle Times, the photo had been picked up by 30 major newspapers, magazines and television stations worldwide (the number has since risen to 100) and the controversy began.

The U.S. government condemned the photo’s release, saying that it violated a 1991 Pentagon ban on depicting caskets of the war dead because it was thought to be insensitive to their families.

The American worker who took the picture, Tami Silicio, 50, was fired. And soon after, Mc Kiernan started getting the first of more than 100 letters and emails, mostly from sympathetic viewers.

“The ... photographer should be commended, NOT condemned, for her very poignant and highly controversial ‘coffin’ shots,” one reader wrote. “War is a horror and many people continue to have their heads in the sand with regards to ... the consequences it bears.”

Said Mc Kiernan: “We got more [response] on this than we’ve ever had. We’re not used to getting fan mail or any other mail; this definitely broke the mold.”

The scoop that brought the agency its notoriety, according to Mc Kiernan, began with a phone call on April 18th, the day the photo appeared in the Seattle newspaper. The paper had been given a copy by a friend of the amateur photographer.

“Most papers,” Mc Kiernan said, “if they have a ... photo [taken by a non-staffer], don’t want to get involved in the redistribution of it.”

Because Zuma had worked with the newspaper before, he said, an editor there steered Silicio to the agency when requests for publication rights started coming in. The company quickly concluded the deal “on a handshake,” he said, and has represented the now-unemployed photographer for a portion of the profits.

Mc Kiernan says he doesn’t know how much that will be. “I think it will gross over five figures,” is all he is willing to predict of the photo’s commercial success.

Silicio, he says, has talked about donating a portion of her share to benefit the bereaved families. Zuma will probably make a matching contribution. And Zuma is selling prints of the photograph on the Internet for the same cause.

“We wanted to find a way to give back,” Mc Kiernan said. The unexpected notoriety “is totally unique in our 10-year history. We’re not part of the reality world looking for 15 seconds of fame. The best photojournalists in the world are people whose names you don’t know, because they’re flies on the wall who bring back truth without an agenda.”

Which, he says, goes to the heart of the matter at hand.

“I think it’s an important photograph to be out there,” Mc Kiernan said. “I was moved when I saw it -- we’re proud to represent it, and proud of [the photographer].”

Anyone trying to censor it, he said, is on the wrong side. “We want to be on the side of those trying to get the story out.”