Can you help me find a particularly unflattering photo of John Howard?

September 9, 2010 6:28 AM

I recently saw a very unflattering photo of Julia Gillard and it reminded me of a similar photo of John Howard that featured prominently in my local newspaper, "The Queensland Times" for a long while until people began to write to the editor about it. Can you help me find that John Howard photo?
posted by h00py to media & arts (4 answers total)

When you do a google image search for John Howard Queensland, a number of unflattering pictures come up. Are any of those the right ones? This one and this one are similar to the one of Julia Gillard you linked to.
posted by phunniemee at 6:37 AM on September 9, 2010

Although those are good unflattering photos, neither of them is the one I'm after. I did a google images search and looked through the first 20 or so pages and couldn't spot it. It's a really bad one!
posted by h00py at 7:03 AM on September 9, 2010

This might or might not help, but unflattering photos in newspapers are sometimes the result of editorializing by photo librarians. The editorial department or the newsroom will contact the photo library and say "we need a picture of public figure X." The actual task often falls to an underpaid twenty-something, who will -- either out of mischief or as a bit of character assassination with plasuible deniability -- dig up an unflattering photo as a way of making the public figure look stupid.

I had a friend from our university newspaper who rose from disaffected twenty-something photo librarian doing this very thing to head of graphics for Associated Press. No telling how many public figures were made to look foolish on the way.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:43 AM on September 9, 2010

You're right of course, ricochet biscuit, that's pretty much exactly what was going on (and it was hilarious!). I just need access to the photo library and an approximate timeframe for when the picture was appearing (probably 2001-2003 or thereabouts I'd hazard a guess). I'll keep looking because it's a doozy.
posted by h00py at 3:01 AM on September 10, 2010