On Wednesday, June 15th, the Boston Bruins’ win over the Vancouver Canucks for the Stanley Cup resulted in a huge riot that resulted in parts of downtown Vancouver erupting in flames. Weeks of well-behaved crowds watching the Vancouver Canucks march toward Game 7 of the NHL final ended abruptly in violence and vandalism that erupted even before the 4-0 loss to the Boston Bruins was officially over.
Freelance photojournalist Richard Lam, who was assigned to cover the game for Getty Images, took to the streets to capture the scenes of mayhem that followed the game. What his lens captured, though, was much more than he bargained for. Lying in the street and seemingly locked in a kiss as chaos erupts around them, a young couple appear oblivious to the charging crowds and baton-wielding riot police.
The man behind the photograph of the kissing couple that went viral, Lam told CTV.ca on Friday that when he took the photo, he wasn't even aware of the gem he had captured until after he had given his camera's memory cards to his editors. "I was blown away," said Lam of his realization. The photographer was being buffeted by rioters and riot police when he spotted the couple. "I was about 20 or 30 yards away," he said. "There were these two people on the ground in this empty street. Initially I thought one of them was hurt." He took a few shots and then the moment was lost.
"I knew I had captured a 'moment' when I snapped the still forms against the backdrop of such chaos but it wasn't until later when I returned to the rink to file my photos that my editor pointed out that the two people were not hurt, but kissing."
"Everyone has been asking who they are," said Lam but he has no idea and never had the opportunity to speak to them. The question was answered after Hannah Jones, Scott's sister told 9News that the man in the photo is her 29-year-old brother.
Propelled to worldwide fame overnight by this much-tweeted photograph, Australian Scott Jones and his Canadian girlfriend Alex Thomas are surprised by all the attention. In their first TV interview on Canadian network CBC News, Jones says they were trying to escape the violence when Vancouver cops "overreacted" by beating them with police shields. As Thomas lay on the ground, her boyfriend tried to comfort her. That's when Lam snapped the photograph that immediately went viral on the Internet. According to Jones’s father, until the buzz generated by the photo on the internet, “it was just something that happened and they've sort of just forgotten about it and moved on”.
Watch the couple’s first interview here:
Click in image above to play video
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