Award kept for controversial ‘corpse photo’

By Chu Meng

The controversial news photo “Holding onto a Corpse and Demanding Money,” which won China’s top news photography prize last week, has been deemed authentic by authorities despite claims to the contrary.

The photo, taken by Zhang Yi, shows a boatman holding a rope connected to the body of a drowned university student, who remains in the water. The caption originally claimed the boatman, Wang Shouhai, demanded 36,000 yuan in payment for bringing the body to shore.

The body belonged to one of the three college students in Jingzhou, Hubei Province who drowned while trying to save two children who had fallen into the Yangtze River on October 24, 2009.

The image attracted nationwide attention when it appeared in the Shanxi-based China Business Review, and Wang suffered beatings because of it. But when the picture was awarded the silver medal at the 23rd National Photographic Art Exhibition on August 5, Yangtze University press director Li Yuquan said the photographer fabricated the photo caption and misled the public.

Li wrote on his blog that Wang was actually gesturing to people on the bank to help him pull out the corpse.

Zhang, 25, who has since resigned from his newspaper, stands by his picture. On August 18, Zhang won the Golden Lens Award – China’s top prize for photojournalists – and this past Monday the Golden Lens Award organizing committee confirmed the photo’s accuracy.