ABSTRACT
Four bombs exploded around central London on the morning of the July 7, 2005. The bombs killed 52 commuters travelling on the public transport network and injured more than 700. On that day, the BBC received 20,000 emails; 3,000 photographs; 1,000 video and still images; and 3,000 text messages related to the events of the morning. A mobile phone camera captured what became the iconic image of the day. Adam Stacey and Keith Tagg were on London’s Northern Line travelling past Kings Cross Station when they were caught up in the explosion aftermath. As the carriage evacuated via the tunnel system, Keith took a picture of Adam on a camera phone (Dear, 2006). Highly emotive and timely images take their place in history—the student standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989; Nick Ut’s 1972 Vietnam War photo of then 9-year-old Kim Phuc running naked and badly burnt by napalm; heavy smoke billowing from the Twin Towers in New York; and now, the trapped underground.jpg. This image of being ‘trapped underground’ was uploaded onto a moblog (moblog.co.uk) that morning; since posting it has been viewed 150,748 times on that site alone (as of May 2007) and has become the image most associated with that fateful morning.
