Editor & Publisher brings us the story of Yoshito Matsushige, who took the only surviving post-bomb photographs in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
Matsushige wandered around Hiroshima for 10 hours, carrying one of the few cameras that survived the atomic bombing and two rolls of film with twenty-four possible exposures. This was no ordinary photo opportunity. He lined up one gripping shot after another but he could only push the shutter seven times.When he was done he returned to his home and developed the pictures in the most primitive way, since every dark room in the city, including his own, had been destroyed. Under a star-filled sky, with the landscape around him littered with collapsed homes and the center of Hiroshima still smoldering in the distance, he washed his film in a radiated creek and hung it out to dry on the burned branch of a tree.
Five of the seven images came out, and they are all the world will ever know of what Hiroshima looked like on that day. Only Matsushige knows what the 17 photos he didn’t take would have looked like.
“Most Unique”
…um folks there is no such this as “most unique”. Something that is unique is one of a kind and therefore there can not be “most” of one item….
david /english teacher off
oh the irony
I’m chuckling now. Of course, you’re right, AP. I lifted that headline right off the article, and never even thought about it. *blush*
Guess the “Editor” in Editor&Publisher was snoozing on the desk!
The owner of the paper where I used to work was notorious in the newsroom for his oft-stated view that all errors in print belong to the editors, while all kudos must go only to the reporters.
Usage note from the American Heritage Dictionary
Usage Note: For many grammarians, unique is the paradigmatic absolute term, a shibboleth that distinguishes between those who understand that such a term cannot be modified by an adverb of degree or a comparative adverb and those who do not. These grammarians would say that a thing is either unique or not unique and that it is therefore incorrect to say that something is very unique or more unique than something else. Most of the Usage Panel supports this traditional view. Eighty percent disapprove of the sentence Her designs are quite unique in today’s fashions. But as the language of advertising in particular attests, unique is widely used as a synonym for worthy of being considered in a class by itself, extraordinary and if so construed it may arguably be modified. In fact, unique appears as a modified adjective in the work of many reputable writers. A travel writer states that “Chicago is no less unique an American city than New York or San Francisco,â€? for example, and the critic Fredric Jameson writes “The great modern writers have all been defined by the invention or production of rather unique styles.â€? Although these examples of the qualification of unique are defensible, writers should be aware that such constructions are liable to incur the censure of some readers.
It’s the photos
Well here we go the stereotype of librarians
as grammar nit picks gets more proof.
Yes, I know, my grammar is bad bad bad.
Sometimes words get together in certain combinations just because the author or editor
etc. just likes the way they fit or maybe that’s the exact expression the photographer used to describe his work….
What’s getting lost in this nit fest…is the story and those photographs. Better to turn the librarian brainpower loose on finding out if those photos are on the internet or in a book or gallery, instead of wasting energy on disapproving the grammar that was used.
Re:It’s the photos
Well, AP honey, the two activities are not mutually exclusive.
Let’s all play to our strengths here. Those of us who are word wonks can address the need for accuracy in language, while you others with a penchant for location and retrieval can perform that service.
I do believe there is room in this sandbox for all kinds of diggers.