Finding a Long Shot in Mexico

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Arriving on assignment in San Juan Teotihuacan, Mexico, I expected to see the ancient Pyramid of the Sun - the largest structure in the area - dominating every vista.

Yet when I set foot in the parking lot of the sprawling Bodega Aurrera supermarket owned by Wal-Mart, the subject of my story, the pyramid was no where to be seen.

I was puzzled because I had seen a photograph taken in 2004 by a Reuters photographer showing the supermarket's construction. In the picture (Slide 1), the Pyramid of the Sun appears to loom just behind the store, but in reality, it is nearly a mile away.

That widely seen image captured the hot-button debates surrounding the store's arrival, which pitted its corporate owners, Wal-Mart, against local residents who wanted to protect the area's vibrant public markets, rich cultural history and significant archaeological sites. There were protests, hunger strikes and allegations of corruption.

Back then, a poet named Homero Aridjis said building the store in Teotihuacan was like “driving the stake of globalization into the heart of Mexican antiquity.”

In April, Mr. Barstow revealed how Wal-Mart's leaders shut down an internal investigation that had found strong evidence the company accelerated its rapid expansion in Mexico with millions of dollars in bribes. Now - in a story just published - he traced the history of the Teotihuacan case.

As a photographer, this is one of the hardest assignments to take on - an investigation into events that happened eight years ago. Since then, tensions have calmed, the store has already been built and previous governmental investigations in Mexico have cleared politicians of wrongdoing.

Knowing we would need archival photos, the photo editor Nancy Weinstock and I began looking for pictures taken in 2004, during the height of this conflict. That's when we found the Reuters photographer Henry Romero's widely seen photo of the pyramid and construction workers on the store's roof perfectly illustrated the cultural clash at the heart of the protests. If fact, the image spurred others to speak out in defiance.

As I prepared to go to Mexico again, I was excited that I'd be able to make a contemporary photo to compare with his and show the fully constructed store in the shadow of the pyramid. So, on my first trip to Mexico, we went to Teotihuacan and searched for his angle. When I looked at his photo I thought the store was right next to the pyramid.

But when I arrived at the Bodega Aurrera and walked around the parking lot, the pyramids were nowhere to be seen.

Looking at a map, we saw that the Pyramid of the Sun was far to the northeast of the store, so we walked, trying to find an angle that showed both. There is a river bed alongside the store, so we walked about a half mile looking for the location Mr. Romero had used years before. When we finally walked far enough to see the pyramid in the background, it was a tiny speck on the horizon.

I realized that to show the two the way Mr. Romero had, I would need a very long telephoto lens to compress the space. I tried a 400mm, but couldn't make a photo showing the store and the pyramid. With no workers on the roof for context, the image fell flat. Besides, I felt guilty taking the photo, because the store is not actually situated at the foot of the pyramid the way the 2004 image makes it appear. The Pyramid of the Sun is almost a mile away from the store, but the telephoto lens used in 2004 compressed the space to make them look closer than they actually are.

So, do we run the photo? After all, the paper used it in 2004 for an article about the conflict. There were spirited discussions about the ethics of running it, and I drew maps of the area for my editors.

To be clear, using a telephoto lens is accepted practice among photojournalists and there is nothing inherently unethical about using it to compress space. In this case, we believed, the use of a longer lens distorted distance, and therefore reality.

Ultimately, we decided not to publish Mr. Romero's photo this time. On first glance, it seemed to be the perfect visual précis for the story. But having been there - even going aloft in a hot-air balloon to scout out the distance - we felt some might fault the paper for visual manipulation. Explaining the optics and compression that produced the 2004 image would only distract from the story's meticulously reported details.

“It looks intriguing until you research it and you can see it's really not piled right on top, but there's actually quite a distance,” said Ms. Weinstock, who is a picture editor for numerous investigative stories. “Clearly, it had to be an enormously long lens. That in itself is distorting and isn't real. It's not showing the re ality of the thing. Since we're trying to tease out the reality of how this store got to be built, to run something inaccurate and visually distorting, I don't think we should run such a thing.”

In a statement, Heather Carpenter, a Reuters spokeswoman, said: “The use of long lenses is standard photo journalism practice and many news organizations, including Reuters and The New York Times, use them as a matter of routine. We were given limited time to look into the questions raised by The New York Times and are reviewing the matter.”

Mr. Aridjis, the same poet quoted in The New York Times in 2004, wrote an Op-Ed in April reflecting on Mr. Barstow's first investigative article, which investigated allegations that Wal-Mart de Mexico may have paid $24 million in bribes to open stores throughout the early 2000s. This time, the image illustrating the piece was of a Wal-Mart atop the Pyramid of the Sun.

It was powerful. It was a cartoon.

Scott Menchin