First of, I don't know how long it took to take that picture, but at the distance the train is, I don't know if that man COULD be saved.
I really don't get WHY take such a picture in the first place: as it was posted, this was a violent event that has no impact on society "as a whole", this has awful consequences on the people who knew Mr Han, such as his family; unlike the (also debatable) picture of that starving African child with a vulture standing right next to him, waiting until the kid could no longer fend himself to start feeding itself, the picture taken had a clear statement: "starvation in the Magreb (I think) is way worse than most people think. It put a new light, a very brutal light, on a situation that wasn't getting enough attention, and it helped, maybe only a little, but it did, once you see that picture you get the message and you don't forget (there's a movie called "The Bang Bang Club", which I believe tells the story of the photographer). But I must ask myself: when a reporter takes a picture of a man about to die in the subway because someone (crazy or not) pushed him on the trails, what is the message there? Because, thank God, this doesn't happen every day, there's no social conscience to be awakened here... Oh but there is a message: "I just got a shocker picture, New York Post will pay me well for it, since they can run it and a shitload of people will read the article trying to figure out what the heck is going on there" that's the message, that and MAYBE a very freaked up idea of how to get those "moment of journalistic instinct" photos in order to get a Pulitzer. It's like one of those very low quality newspapers that bet on pictures of dead people, blood everywhere, in order to shock costumers and sell more papers.
Hannah Arendt speaks about this on her classic book "Adolf Eichmann Trial", she was one of many jews kept in the Camp Gurs concentration camp, but managed to escape with others. In the book she talks about the trial of said nazi, and the "circus" that was created for the trial, when he, in fact, was an officer of almost no importance to WW II events, though he was treated as if he was Hitler himself. What she perceived there was something awful, something that happens everywhere in different areas: the banalization of evil. Basically it means, making a serious matter, such as violence, and making it common: when I went to Tijuana, for instance, there was an Australian group with me, they were terrified to see children begging for money, selling stuff on the streets, etc. I didn't feel anything, because it was banalized to me: I live in São Paulo, Brazil, this shitty stuff is common place here, sadly, so we lose perception, and suddenly what is WRONG no longer disgusts, it's just "normal", and when it's normal there's no reason to FIX it, it's uncomfortable so you just make it go away by ignoring the problem or doing something else.
The publication of this picture, more than anything, is banalizing that person's life by capitalizing on tragedy for the sake of nothing but ratings and fame. Do not be mistaken, for the people who published the picture, the death of that man was an opportunity, it had a PRICE TAG, and they wanted that money, they turned a lost life into profit. It's not a war photo, it's not major event that will shake society, it only shook us with indignity, which means something great, it means there're people out there and in here with good moral sense, the minimum moral sense, to see that preposterous picture not as news, but as an opportunistic OFFENSE to morals and to society as a whole. Violence, every type of violence, must never be banalized, keep the horror photos for when they are really needed, so that they can shock the right way and journalism can have a (very) positive social impact, don't keep force feeding violence into the public, until we no longer feel it, that just makes the world a much worse place.
