The United States and Iran signed a memorandum aimed at ending a conflict. News outlets responded by dispatching photographers to capture ships floating in water and people existing in Tehran. Pulitzer committee just cleared their calendars.
Ships in the Strait of Hormuz look exactly like ships in every other strait. Tankers. Cargo vessels. Maybe a destroyer if you're lucky. The photographer stood on a dock, pointed a camera at the horizon, and called it geopolitical coverage. Daily life in Tehran involves the same shit daily life involves everywhere else. People buy groceries. They walk dogs. They check their phones while crossing the street. Groundbreaking stuff.
This is what happens when editors need to justify sending someone overseas but the story has no actual visuals. Can't photograph a memorandum. Can't photograph diplomacy. Can't photograph the absence of conflict. So you get boats and street scenes packaged as recovery indicators.
Retail traders saw the headline and immediately started googling which defense contractors to short. Wrong move. The smart money already priced in peace talks three weeks ago when some deputy minister posted a cryptic tweet. You're trading on photo essays now. Might as well buy stock in Kodak.
The memorandum aimed at ending the conflict. Aimed. Not ended. Not resolved. Aimed. Like throwing a dart after six beers. But the photo editor needed content and the wire services needed to move product, so here we are. Ships doing ship things. Iranians doing Iranian things. Recovery emerging like your hairline. Slowly and only if you squint.
Every financial outlet ran the same gallery with minor cropping differences. Bloomberg showed four tankers. Reuters showed three tankers and a frigate. The Wall Street Journal went rogue with a street vendor selling pomegranates. Hard-hitting visual journalism separating the men from the boys.
The conflict that required a memorandum to aim at ending it will be replaced by another conflict requiring another memorandum, and photographers will once again capture boats floating and people walking, and you'll still be underwater on your SOXL calls.
Photo by on Unsplash
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