Showing Disaster Without Baring Bones

A 'white Christmas' and snow-covered cityscapes in the last week of the year is something most of us, sitting here in the tropics and temperates not being able to get away to a hill station or the Himalayas, see in the movies with awe, envy and affection. But the blizzard raging across the US, particularly in the city of Buffalo in New York state, is not a dreamy landscape fit for a greetings card, but an apocalyptic nightmare where hell seems to have really frozen over.

Whether 'blizzard of the century' or not, it is a natural disaster that has already killed 60 and left hundreds battered. And, yet, one thing has been noticeable. In the coverage of the ongoing disaster, the visuals - news photos as well as videos - point away from direct human suffering, especially of death. Instead, the scale of damage wrought is driven home effectively by images of cars buried under piles of snow, houses covered in ice and icicles making them look like strange baroque cathedrals, people ploughing snow from their housefronts.... There is something to learn here in the coverage of human suffering, whether wrought by nature or man - that one can show the magnitude of a calamity without baring its proverbial or literal bones. It's not about shyness of showing oneself or one's people when they're down, but also about being dignified in the face of tragedies.