Dark and mysterious BusinessWeek photos

Hal Morris, writing on his Grumpy Editor blog, doesn’t like the dark, black-and-white photos that BusinessWeek chose to illustrate two stories in the latest issue.

Morris wrote, “Adding to the mysterious, top-secret flavor, notes Grumpy Editor, is that each photo contains no caption. Like frames from a foreign film, a ‘dark’ atmosphere is captured by photographer Christopher Anderson in illustrating informative articles, ‘The Fed’s Revolution’ and ‘Street of Fear.’

“Although Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, former Fed Chairman Paul A. Volcker and economists are mentioned in the ‘Revolution’ text, editors selected a somewhat fuzzy dominant photo to lead off ‘the financial crisis.’ It shows an arm with a finger pointing to an unidentified man in an unbuttoned jacket standing in front of a building bearing Wall Street identification.

“That’s it.  Covering almost half of two pages, it supposedly captures the financial crisis on ‘the street.’ Another after-dark photo in that article shows a hatless man in an overcoat (the type Dan Rather wore in CBS overseas assignments) clutching a beverage cup, perhaps coffee from Starbucks, while a woman with a turned-up coat collar approaches as steam obscures a building in the background.  (Is one of them passing government secrets?)”

Read more here. One of the photos can be seen here. Another is here.