Napalm Girl - Descriptive Text

The very first thing that catches the eye of someone observing the picture we chose, would be a young naked and barefooted girl slowly running towards the person taking the picture. She has her arms stretched away from her body, as if she was shaking them to try and alleviate unbearable pain. Her mouth is hanging wide open and her face is contorted with what might be excruciating pain or extreme anger. This girl is depicted as the centre of both the photograph and the scene displayed in the photograph. Around her there are four more children, almost all of them equally distressed, following or preceding the young girl. If you look at the position of their arms and legs, it seems like they are not walking, but running away from something which might be the cause of their distress. The five children are running along a broad and seemingly deserted road and are followed by five calm-looking soldiers, some of them armed with machine guns. The street, which runs a straight line through the picture, is surrounded by what might be a flat meadow landscape and three or more dilapidated looking houses. If you focus your eyes on the end of the road, you can spot a billowing cloud bank of smoke in the back of the picture, which might be the source of the children’s distress. The smoke cloud completely covers the sky and causes the rest of the landscape to disappear into impenetrable darkness.