Ever since the Huffington Post article came out, showing the sensitive side of Buffalo guys, I have been irked about an image that went along with the article. While all of the other images showed pretty, colorful shots of respective cities, Buffalo was, once again, depicted as a cold, desolate place. Now I’m not saying that we don’t have cold winters. We do. But that’s what you get when you live in a city that has four seasons. We are not alone, though we are often perceived to be alone. Does the guy in the lead image (center) look like he’s in a romantic mood? Or does he look like he’s going to collect back taxes from your grandmother?
The more I thought about the image, the more I thought about how often we get the short end of the stick when it comes to national media. I ended up sending an email to Claire Gordon who wrote the article, and voiced my concerns, stating that if the photo was snagged from the Associated Press (which is often the case), that I would like to offer a replacement image as a substitution. Why? Because whenever AP is in Buffalo, chances are that the photographer is taking photos of the over-sensationalized Buffalo winters. It’s not like AP comes to Buffalo to take photos of our vibrant summers. That’s not what people want to see when they think of Buffalo. So, while Huffington Post was conducting a search for a photo of a sensitive guy in Buffalo, the Getty image of the HSBC Arena popped up and that is what was used to depict a sensitive Buffalo guy. While the article was flowery (in a good way), the photo was cold as ice.
Fortunately Claire accepted my offer and asked that I send a few of my own photos along – not necessarily romantic, but not snow-covered tax collector types (my apologies to the gentleman that was featured in the original photo). I chose to use photos that I took from the past few weeks. These are just normal guys doing normal things in Buffalo – nothing staged, nothing out of the ordinary… just some candid shots of guys enjoying themselves. Claire has told me that she is going to do her best to get the original shot of the guy walking away from the HSBC Arena changed. Whether this happens or not, this will not be the last time that Buffalo is portrayed as a permafrost city. That’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t speak up when it does happen. Often times there is an understanding writer who never even considered the impact of the photo that was chosen to go along with the article – especially when the subject matter in no way correlates with the image posted.
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I also wrote a similar plea to www.gaycities.com regarding this article, though I never heard back from the writer.