I have long been fascinated by the pictures chosen to accompany stories in Standart.
We all know how expensive it must be to employ photographers. Standart’s usual practice where primary resources are lacking is to accompany generic stories – robbery, prostitution, gypsies, narcotics with pictures lifted straight out of Google images. Thus any story about burglary is usually illustrated with a scary photo of a man in a balaclava pointing a shotgun straight at the viewer.Any story involving prostitutes shows a leggy woman leaning over to talk to a car driver and so on.
Some choices are just bizarre – as in the example above. The story is about a village in England which is successfully using human waste to power their electricity.
So our intrepid editor picks up the first picture he can find on the internet – a headless cutie sitting on the toilet. But hang on a minute. What are those men’s feet doing dangling in the front of the picture? And why is there another toilet so close to the first without a barrier in between.
My first thought is that the man is jumping for joy at the prospect of toilet intimacy – but the picture is too crisp. His feet look stationary. Has this headless cutie managed to hang her husband, so she can enjoy the sight of his protruding tongue while she takes a pee?
Unfortunately as this picture features non-Bulgarians and Standart obviously lacks the funds for an international murder investigation, we will never know the answer.
